LC 

10% I 

25 




Book 



£_ 






TO 



UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION 

BULLETIN. 1913. NO. 19 WHOLE NUMBER 529 



GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

AND ITS LESSONS FOR THE 

UNITED STATES 

By 
HOLMES BECKWITH 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1913 



BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF EDUCATION. 



[With the exceptions indicated, the documents named below will be sent freeof charge upon application 
to the Commissioner of Education, Washington, D. C, Those marked with an asterisk (*) are no longer 
available for free distribution, but may be had of the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing 
Office, Washington, D. C, upon payment of the price stated. Documents marked with a dagger (f) are 
out of print. Titles are abridged.] 

1909. 

No. 1. Facilities for study and research in Washington, Arthur T. Hadley. 

No. 2, Admission of Chinese students to American universities * John Fryer. 
*No. 3. Daily meals of -school children. Caroline L. Hunt. 10 eta. 
*No. 4. The teaching staff of secondary schools. E. L. Thorndike. 10 cts. 

No. 5. Statistics of public, society, and school libraries in 1908. 
*No. 6. Instruction in the fine and manual arts. Henry T. Bailey. 15 cts. 

No. 7. Index to the Reports of the Commissioner of Education, 1867-1907. 
*No. 8. A teacher's professional library. Classified list of 100 titles. 5 cts. 

No. 9. Bibliography of education for 1908-9. 

No. 10. Education for efficiency in railroad service. J. Shirley-Eaton. 
*No. 11. Statistics of State universities, etc, 1908-9. 5 cts. 

1910. 

No. 1. Reform in teaching religion in Saxony. Arley Barthlow Show. 

No. 2. State school systems, Oct. 1, 1908, to Oct. 1, 1909. E. C. Elliott. 
fNo. 3. List of publications of the United States Bureau of Education, 1867-1910. 

No. 4. The biological stations of Europe. Charles Atwood Kofoid. 

No. 5. American schoolhouses. Fletcher B. Dresslar. 
*No. 6. Statistics of State universities, etc., 1909-10. 5 eta. 

1911. 

*No. 1. Bibliography of science teaching. 5 cts. 

No. 2. Opportunities for graduate study in agriculture. A. O. Monahan. 
*No. 3. Agencies for improvement of teachers in service. William C.Ruediger. 15 cts. 
*No. 4. Report of the commission to study the public schools of Baltimore. 10 cts. 

No. 5. Age anoT grade census of schools and colleges. George Drayton Strayer. 

No. 6. Graduate work in mathematics in universities. 

No. 7. Undergraduate work in mathematics in colleges and universities. 

No. 8. Examinations in mathematics. 

No. 9. Mathematics in technological schools of collegiate grade. 
*No. 10. Bibliography of education for 1909-10. 15 cts. 
*No. 11. Bibliography of child study for the years 1908-9. 10 cts. 

No. 12. Training of teachers of elementary and secondary mathematics. 

No. 13. Mathematics in elementary schools. 
*No. 14. Provision for exceptional children in the public schools. 10 eta. 
*No. 15. Educational system of China as recently reconstructed. H. E. King. 10 cts. 

No. 16. Mathematics in public and private secondary schools. 
*No. 17. List of publications of the U. S. Bureau of Education, October, 1911. 5 cts. 

No. 18. Teachers' certificates (laws and regulations). Harlan Updegraff. 

No. 19. Statistics of State universities, etc., 1910-11. 

1912. 

•No. 1. Course of study for rural-school teachers. F. Mutchler and W. J. Craig. 5 cts. 
No. 2. Mathematics at West Point and Annapolis. 
No. 3. Report of committee on uniform records and reports. 
No. 4. Mathematics in technical secondary schools. 

(Continued on p. 3 of cover.) 



UNITED STATES BUREAU OF EDUCATION 

BULLETIN, 1913, NO. 19 - - - - - - - WHOLE NUMBER 529 



GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION 

AND ITS LESSONS FOR THE 

UNITED STATES 




By 

HOLMES BECKW1TH 




WASHINGTON 
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 
1911 * 



/ 






D. OF D. 
JUN 25 1913 



n 



£ 



CONTENTS. 

Page. 

Preface 7 

Part I.— The United States. 

Chapter I . — The apprenticeship system 9 

Chapter II.- — Opinions of employers and employed 19 

Chapter III. — Industrial schools in the United States 27 

Chapter IV. — Results and omissions of our industrial education 40 

Part II. — Germany. 

Chapter V. — The background of the industrial schools 49 

Chapter VI. — Guilds and chambers of industry 56 

Chapter VII. — Apprenticeship 64 

Chapter VIII. — The system of industrial schools 77 

Chapter IX. — The industrial schools of Hamburg 87 

Chapter X.— The industrial schools of Berlin 96 

Chapter XI. — The industrial schools of Munich 109 

Chapter XII. — Results of the industrial schools 122 

Part III. — Conclusion. 

Chapter XIII. — Some suggestions for our industrial training 133 

Appendixes. 

A. — A German apprentice contract 145 

B. — The Wisconsin apprentice law of 1911 147 

List of references 149 

Index 153 

3 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 



Department of the Interior, 

Bureau of Education, 

Washington, April 2Jf., 1918. 
Sir: It is generally conceded that Germany has done more toward 
adapting industrial education to the needs of the people than has 
been done in the United States. Conditions in the United States 
differ widely from conditions in Germany, and the details of adapta- 
tion must therefore be different, but the underlying principles are 
the same. In arriving at an understanding of these principles, and 
for suggestions in applying them under American conditions, a clear 
presentation of industrial education in Germany can not fail to be 
helpful. I therefore recommend that the manuscript prepared by 
Dr. Holmes Beckwith, and transmitted herewith, be published as 
a bulletin of this bureau. 

Kespectfully, P. P. Claxton, 

Commissioner. 
The Secretary of the Interior. 

5 



PREFACE. 

The purpose of the present study is to ascertain in what ways we 
in the United States may develop industrial education so that it 
may be of the greatest service to industry and to industrial workers; 
as well as to the whole people. The economic viewpoint and eco- 
nomic aspects have dominated the pedagogical, and the practical 
outcome has at all times been kept to the fore. Industrial education 
for the masses, for the rank and file of the workers, has been the chief 
concern. I have not concerned myself with agricultural nor with com- 
mercial education, however impoitant these fields may be. Industrial 
education for girls and women has been taken up but slightly. 

In the United States we lack large practical experience with in- 
dustrial education for the mass of workers. Of all countries, Ger- 
many has had probably the largest and most fruitful experience 
with such education and has most to teach us. To learn at first 
hand from German experiences, I spent the summer of 1911 investi- 
gating industrial education in Germany. The cities visited were 
selected with a view to their importance industrially and include 
a number of the chief industrial centers in various lines of manufac- 
ture. The following cities were visited: The city State of Hamburg; 
Leipzig, Dresden, Chemnitz, and Plauen in Saxony; Munich in Ba- 
varia; Mannheim in Baden; and Berlin, Magdeburg, Frankfort on 
Main, Coblenz, Cologne, Dusseldorf, Elberfeld, Barmen, Dortmund, 
Essen, Duisburg, Crefeld, Munchen-Gladbach, Rheydt, and Aachen, 
in Prussia. Numerous industrial schools of all grades were visited, 
a large proportion of which were in operation. Inquiries were made 
of school directors and teachers, and members of school boards, as 
to the organization, methods, and results of the schools. The rela- 
tions of the schools to and their results on industry, and the attitude 
of industrial employers to them, were especially investigated. In 
almost every city the chamber of industry was visited and inquiries 
made of these bodies, which are the best fitted of all to represent the 
opinions of the masters. In addition, a considerable number of 
school reports and other printed data were collected, of which one 
could learn only when on the ground. 

It may be questioned whether German experience is likely to be 
largely useful to us in the United States, on account of our differ- 
ences, economic, political, and temperamental. In Part II I shall 
note some of the economic differences. The psychological and 
political differences are well known. Suffice it for the present to say 
that I believe these constitute no essential bar to our adoption of 

7 



8 PREFACE. 

such features of German industrial training as I shall recommend. 
It is to be understood, however, that details may and probably must 
be modified; at times this modification may approach the essentials. 
It is as yet too early to say what these modifications will be. 

Two terms used require special mention. The German term " Fort- 
bildungsschule " has usually been translated "continuation school.'' 
This translation does not give the accurate meaning in most cases 
where the term is used. Following Dr. A. A. Snowden, in his book, 
The Industrial Improvement Schools of Wurttemberg, published 
by Teachers College, Columbia University, in 1907, I have ren- 
dered the term "improvement school. " In case of a few schools that 
are merely continuation schools, merely continuing the subjects of 
the common school, the same term has been rendered "continuation 
school." It is believed that this distinction in terms will clarify 
a real distinction in meaning, and that the scope and aim of almost 
all German Fortbildungsschulen are much better represented by the 
term "improvement schools." 

The term "trade school" when applied to the United States is 
used, agreeably to current usage, to mean a school which teaches 
the operations as well as the science of a trade or trades. The same 
term when applied to Germany is used in a different sense, agreeably 
to German usage as to terms and practice as to schools. A "Fach- 
schule" in Germany is a "specialty school" or "trade school," and 
such a school may teach the practice of a trade or trades, or may and 
often does confine itself strictly to technical (theoretical) training. 

My gratitude is due to Prof. Henry R. Seager, of Columbia Uni- 
versity, for his advice and criticism. A number of others, loyal 
friends of industrial education, kindly gave me their counsel. I ac- 
knowledge especially the aid of Prof. Charles R. Richards, director 
of Cooper Union, New York City, who suggested many of the topics 
which I later investigated; Dr. A. A. Snowden, of the New Jersey 
Commission of Industrial Education; Prof. Paul Hanus, of Harvard 
University, chairman of the Massachusetts Commission on Indus- 
trial Education; Prof. John Graham Brooks; Prof. M. E. Sadler, of 
the University of Manchester; and Mr. Charles H. Morse, of the 
Massachusetts Commission on Industrial Education. I can not 
here acknowledge by name the numerous German schoolmen, cham- 
ber of industry officials, and others, who received me very courteously 
and with detailed care aided me in my inquiry. To them, as a group, 
I give my hearty thanks. Two men I will mention whose help I 
especially appreciate, Herr Schulinspektor August Kasten, of Ham- 
burg, and Herr Direktor Kandeler, of the Second Compulsory Im- 
provement School of Berlin. Finally, my greatest debt is due to my 
wife, for her criticism and her patient and careful performance of the 
arduous clerical labors necessary for preparing the book for publication. 

I offer the study for the earnest consideration of those who wish 
to see the industrial efficiency of our citizens increased. 

Holmes Beckwith. 



GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION AND ITS 
LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES. 



PART I. THE UNITED STATES. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM. 

When we ask by what means are our industrial workers now trained 
for their work we must, to answer intelligently, examine into the 
present status and tendencies of the apprenticeship system. If these 
be such that apprenticeship meets, and promises to continue to meet 
sufficiently, the needs for individual training, what function have 
industrial schools to perform? That apprenticeship, in combination 
with all other activities now in the field, does not adequately meet 
present needs is shown by the complaint heard from many sides of 
the lack of skilled workmen. 

The apprenticeship system took its rise in medieval handicraft 
work. A youth would bind himself to a master workman for a period 
which came in most cases to be fixed at seven years, work for him, 
and in turn live in his house and be taught "the art and mysteries" 
of his trade. The personal relations were exceedingly close, and the 
personal factors dominated the technical — conditions under which 
the system was at its best. The interest of master united with that 
of the apprentice in seeking thorough training for the latter, because 
the long apprenticeship gave the master abundant chance to gain, if 
he had trained his apprentice to become a skillful worker. The result 
was a system which, for the type of industries of the day, was probably 
better than any other which could be devised. The apprentice and 
his master were in the early days of the system on an approximate 
social equality in the sense that they came from the same social class. 
The apprentice looked forward to becoming within a few years a 
master himself, and this anticipation was often fulfilled. In the later 
middle ages, the guilds, or organizations of the masters of a craft, 
opposed such improvement of the status of the apprentice and tried 
with much success to restrict mastership to the families of guild 
members. Other great defects of the medieval system were that the 
apprentice was required to spend much of his time doing household 

9 



10 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

tasks and other drudgery which advanced him little or not at all in 
his craft training, and the period of apprenticeship was often longer 
than was necessary thoroughly to learn his trade. 

In the United States apprenticeship in its early stages was much 
like the system in medieval times. Legal indentures were the rule, 
in which parent or guardian, justice of the peace, or benevolent 
society, acting for the youth, bound him out to manufacturer, mer- 
chant, craftsman, or mariner, usually for the period terminating at 
his majority. 1 Both parties appeared in court and swore to carry 
out the provisions of the written indenture, whose terms were made 
to suit the special desires of the parties concerned. The policy of 
the State was to have all youths of artisan class taught a trade, and 
neglected and orphan children provided with a home. Thus any 
failure of the employer to carry out his contract made him liable to 
damages. The State further protected the apprentice by requiring 
from him promises of good behavior, while he also was punishable 
for violation of his obligations. Parents desired indentures to insure 
to their boys a chance to learn a trade fully, while employers desired 
the contract that they might be protected from loss of the services 
of the apprentice during his last and most valuable years of training. 
The indenture involved a real loss of personal liberty; and much of 
the law of apprentices, as that concerned with runaways, classed 
them-, in effect, as slaves. The contract assumed an equality of 
master and apprentice which did not, in fact, exist. This inequality 
appeared in its worst form in the compulsion put on the apprentice, 
as in medieval times, to do odd jobs by which he learned nothing and 
by which his term of apprenticeship was unduly extended. The 
apprentice found himself after a time doing as good work as a journey- 
man while he must for years accept an apprentice's meager wage. A 
feeling of resentment against unjust treatment developed in his mind 
and frequently vented itself in slighted work. Expanding ideas of 
personal liberty in the mind of the apprentice, in which he but fol- 
lowed the spirit of the times, conspired with industrial changes to 
cause the gradual decline of the use of the indenture. 2 

The industrial revolution ushered in methods of production and 
transportation whose results on industry as well as on social life 
generally are clearly marked. Among others, the concentration of 
industry, the increase in the use of capital, organization of workers 
in a hierarchy of ranks, and the use of machine tools, conspired 
against the apprenticeship system. The technical elements have 
come, in most of our modern industries, to dominate the personal, 
at least in the sense that relations of man and man are chiefly deter- 
mined by technical considerations. Now the best in the apprentice- 
ship system depends on personal relations for its efficiency, on mutual 

i Motley, J. M. Apprenticeship in American trade unions. Pt. I, ch. 1. ' Ibid., ch. 1, p. 17. 



THE APPEENTICESHIP SYSTEM. 11 

understanding and adaptation of master and apprentice, teacher and 
taught. The master craftsman of the earlier days, who was often 
at the same time merchant, has given way to the entrepreneur, the 
administrative and financial head, and to the master craftsman who 
works for wage as superintendent, foreman, or skilled worker. The 
former, our modern entrepreneur, no longer works with and teaches 
his apprentices; he delegates those functions to subordinates; takes, 
as a rule, less personal interest in the welfare of his apprentices, and 
concerns himself chiefly with other, and to him apparently, more 
pressing matters. Moreover, the necessities for competing for a 
wide, and in many cases a world market, and thus increasing output 
and lowering cost by every possible device, have left little time for 
superintendent, foreman, or journeyman to instruct apprentices. 
It is not to the interest of any subordinate to instruct the apprentice 
unless the entrepreneur requires it, and moreover pays for it as fully 
as for regular work. Consequently, in the great majority of shops, 
the apprentice is compelled more and more to shift for himself and 
"pick up" his trade as best he may, which is generally not very well. 
Pieceworking journeymen would, it is said, not even deign to shut 
a door unless their comfort required it; still less would they show 
an apprentice how to do anything. Even a journeyman paid by 
time is likely to find, in the long run, that instruction given to appren- 
tices is at his own cost and means just so much less bread and butter 
in the mouths of his family. An example of this condition is given 
by the amusement with which a printer speculates as to the result 
to a journeyman in a big city office who should have the temerity 
to enter on his time card, "Half an hour spent showing Johnny the 
why and how of the Smith job." 

Why, then, does not the astute entrepreneur direct his subordinates 
specifically to instruct his apprentices and make it worth their while 
to do so ? The answer is that he does so at his own peril, and at the 
cost of an immediate money loss. If he be farsighted enough, and 
moreover can afford the immediate expense, he may shoulder the 
cost for the sake of having an assured supply of skilled labor for 
the future. But unfortunately farsightedness is not fully developed 
even in entrepreneurs. Further, all entrepreneurs now recognize 
that they secure their labor supply from a general market, whence, 
if they are able to offer sufficient inducement, they may obtain 
journeymen trained by others; while on the other hand, if they go 
to the expense of training apprentices it may be merely to see them 
later enter the employ of other, and possibly rival firms. Here we 
see one of the results of competition, which, when severe, generally 
leads competitors, especially smaller and weaker ones, to follow 
their immediate advantage with little regard to the future. So it 
comes about that modern entrepreneurs, in the main, do not feel 



12 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

the necessity of thoroughly training apprentices and thus lack a sense 
of responsibility in the matter. The result is that each employer 
keeps up as well as he can, very many of them on the basis of skill 
taught by others. Apprentices learning their trades in the country 
go to the great cities as journeymen. So desired are city jobs that 
many contractors can get all the journeymen they need, and do not 
have to take any apprentices at all. This country is also dependent 
on the continuous supply of skilled workers who come here from 
Europe; without these, in fact, the situation would be more pressing 
than it is. The dearth of apprentices is met temporarily in many of 
the building and other trades by the employment of "helpers," in the 
building trades, men who seldom rise, while in some other trades, as 
the machinist, they usually are younger, and in time become journey- 
men. 

The apprenticeship system has thus been declining for many years. 
By the sixties the old indentures had largely passed away, so much 
so that they were no longer the rule but the exception. 1 American 
industry was in a transition stage of adoption of division of labor and 
of machinery, and along with these changes the old system of appren- 
ticeship was fast passing away. However, apprenticeship is not by 
any means dead yet, and of late years has seen a revival in improved 
form, adapted to the conditions and needs of modern industry. In 
the recent emphasis on industrial education the vitality of the im- 
proved apprenticeship system has been somewhat overlooked. Of 
its methods I shall speak later; suffice it for the present to point out 
some scanty yet significant indications of its strength. The Twenty- 
seventh Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of 
Labor for 1906 shows that out of 58 employers engaged in different 
industries 31 had a system of apprenticeship and 27 had no such sys- 
tem, while of 104 officers of trade unions 55 represented trades where 
apprenticeship was, and 44 where it was not, in force. 2 President 
Charles S. Howe, of the Case School of Applied Science, Cleveland, 
Ohio, sent a letter in 1907 to 400 manufacturers in Ohio, including 
nearly all the large firms. 3 He received replies from 124. Of these, 
56 had an apprenticeship system, while 68 had none. Most of those 
training apprentices, however, gave them but the minimum training 
necessary that they might do their work fairly well. These figures 
should not be taken as indicative of the proportion of firms through- 
out the country which train apprentices. The average would proba- 
bly be considerably lower, for the firms replying average among the 
larger and better and are in the more fully industrialized States. 
Messrs. Cross and Russell, of the New York Central Railroad, have 
discovered that "55 railroads have 7,053 apprentices in 368 shop 

'Wright, C. D. The apprenticeship system in its relation to industrial education, 1908, p. 15. 
; Mass. Bureau ol Statistics of Labor, An. Rep. , 1906. Pt. I, p. 7. 
'Wright, pp. 18, 19. 



THE APPKENTICESHIP SYSTEM. 13 

plants, while 67 plants answering have no apprentices." 1 The 
National Machine Tool Builders' Association found that a large per- 
centage of the firms employing apprentices were in New England, the 
Middle Atlantic, and the Central Western States; and, further, that 
the majority of them entered into formal contracts properly to in- 
struct the apprentices during a stated period of indenture. 2 Accord- 
ing to the Vocation Bureau of Boston: 

From the latest statistics available 43 States have laws relating to the employment 
of apprentices. Thirty-eight States provide that, in addition to the trade, the 
apprentice shall be taught the common English branches of education in some pub- 
lic or other school or through such means as the employer may provide. 3 

Most of these laws, however, are dead letters. As Prof. McCarthy 
writes: "The Wisconsin apprentice law was drafted in 1849 and is 
useless paper to-day." * 

Notwithstanding this persistence of the apprenticeship system, 
the industries of the country are suffering from a great dearth of 
skilled labor. There can be little doubt as to the widespread nature 
of this dearth, whatever be regarded as its cause or causes. The 
nature of the lack is indicated in part by the summarized results of 
an inquiry conducted by the New Jersey Commission on Industrial 
Education, to which over 2,000 manufacturing, building, and other 
industrial firms throughout the State, employing 250,000 workers, 
replied. Workers in the building trades most urgently needed indus- 
trial education : 

Comparatively few can read or understand a drawing, and as for expressing their 
ideas on paper by means of sketches it is generally out of the question. In the 
important machine industries a knowledge of workshop mathematics or applied 
mechanics, ability to follow working drawings, and to make a suitable sketch, as well 
as familiarity with the practices of the trade, are matters in which many are found 
wanting. 5 

A further lack, caused by specialization, is discussed below. 

Dr. Motley, in his monograph on Apprenticeship in American Trade- 
Unions, shows that apprenticeship has been successively regulated in 
the history of industries in the United States first by statute law or 
indenture, later by custom, then by trade-unions, and lastly by trade 
agreements between employer and employee, determined by a joint 
board. None of these methods ever held the field to the exclusion of 
others, and in their evolution they overlap each other. Nevertheless, 
the general order of dominance of the several methods is as given. As 
our industries developed into the modern form the indenture fell into 

'Wright, p. 43. 
'Ibid., p. 18. 

•Bulletin No. 1. The Machinist. Vocations for Boston Boys. Issued by the Vocation Bureau ol 
Boston. P. 10. 

* Report ot the (Wisconsin) Commission upon the Plans for the Extension of Industrial and Agricultural 
Training. Jan. 10, 1911, p. 81. 

* Rep. of N. Jer. Commis. on Indus. Educ, 1909, pp. 4, 6. 



14 GEKMAN INDTJSTBIAL EDUCATION. 

disuse, individual bargaining came into vogue, the power of the 
employer increased, and trade customs were openly disregarded 
whenever it was to his interest. Thus it was that trade-union regula- 
tion of apprenticeship was for some time concerned chiefly to uphold 
old customs of the trade. Later the unions attempted to determine 
the length of the term of apprenticeship. Finally, beginning in 1839, 
with a regulation by the Typographical Society of New Orleans, 
unions which had suffered a lowering of the average skill of their 
members by the widespread practice of runaway apprentices working 
as journeymen, and were thus in danger of a lowered wage, tried to 
limit the number of apprentices to some proportion of the number 
of journeymen. This proportion, though ostensibly such as would 
meet the needs of the industry, was generally determined by rough 
guesswork. The unions found themselves too weak effectively to 
enforce these regulations without the formation of national and 
international unions. Some unions have been strong enough to 
enforce their regulations on apprenticeship, but with very many this 
remains merely the ideal toward which the unionists strive. Even 
where national unions impose exact apprenticeship rules, locals hesi- 
tate to strike to enforce them, and so it comes about in general that 
only where there is a strong local union are such regulations enforced. 
Moreover, the assumption by the unions of the sole right to regulate 
apprenticeship matters has aroused strong opposition among em- 
ployers, resulting in an intense struggle from which there has now 
emerged the present dominant system of regulation by joint agree- 
ment between representatives of employers and employed, often 
through associations covering a whole locality or local industry. 1 
According to Motley : 

Of the 120 national and international trade-unions, with a total of 1,676,200 members, 
affiliated in 1904 with the American Federation of Labor, 50 unions, with a member- 
ship of 766,417, do not attempt to maintain apprenticeship systems. 2 

These 50 unions include 35 unions of unskilled workers who are 
able to pick up a knowledge of their work in a short time; 11 unions, 
7 of which are in railroad work, whose trades are recruited by pro- 
motion from associated positions, as engineers from firemen; 7 
unions in whose trades machine work and minute division of labor 
have made apprenticeship impossible; and 2 unions representing 
properly professions rather than trades. 

The remaining national unions, that is, about 70 of the 120 affiliated in 1904 with the 
American Federation of Labor, with a membership of 900,000, together with some 
half-dozen unaffiliated national unions, attempt more or less successfully to enforce 
apprenticeship regulations. 

"Of these 70 unions," says Motley, "only about 19 actually succeed 
in enforcing apprenticeship as a prerequisite to membership." 3 In 

i Motley. Pt. I, chs. 1-4. * Ibid., p. 53. « Ibid., pp. 58-60. 



THE APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM. 15 

fact, neither employer nor union is able to control the apprentice 
situation satisfactorily, even in those points where they are in agree- 
ment. . Apprentices, after obtaining a smattering of a trade or becom- 
ing half trained, frequently run away and take up work elsewhere 
as journeymen, a practice exceedingly hard to stop. 

Minor motives of unionists in the regulation of apprenticeship are 
the desire to uphold the standard of workmanship because of pride 
in their trade and their skill and the need of a common measure of 
ability (or "standardized" ability) for the purpose of collective bar- 
gaining. 1 Unionists fear to attempt to secure a high wage rate, for 
some of their number, being poorer workmen, may be unable to reach 
it, and may thus injure the others by their competition. An approxi- 
mate equality of ability, such as could best be secured by a uniform 
minimum of apprenticeship training, would greatly improve the con- 
ditions of collective bargaining as compared with the present basis 
of some thoroughly trained workers and some half trained. 

An investigation of the Minnesota Bureau of Labor into strike and 
other statistics indicates that — 

the employers of the United States practically control the regulations of the training 
of new workmen in the greater number of American mechanical and manufacturing 
industries, subject, however, to State laws regulating child labor. 2 

The major responsibility for the conditions thus rests with the 
employers. Where employers have not attempted to regulate these 
matters, unions have often assumed the responsibilities and with 
them the powers of regulation. 

In conclusion^ the net result of our inquiry into the influence of 
trade unions on the scarcity of skilled workmen seems to be that to 
no great extent is that scarcity due to union action. We must look 
elsewhere for the chief causes of this lack. 

Of some of these, incident to modern industrial changes. I have 
already spoken. One remains, and that perhaps the most important 
of all. That is specialization, or the division of labor. Though 
affecting different industries very unequally, the aggregate effect on 
apprenticeship and on both the demand for and supply of skilled 
labor has been very great. Roughly speaking, this effect has been 
greatest on the metal, on some of the leather and wood industries, 
on textiles, and on garment making. The subdivision of processes 
in some of these industries has been very great; for example, the 
making of a modern shoe involves about a hundred processes. In 
the past, all craftsmen proper were compelled to be skilled; now the 
tendency is toward a differentiation into many industries, the result 
of which is a demand for a arge number of workmen of moderate 
skill, or in some cases unskilled, and a lesser number of highly skilled 
workers. The mere fact that a worker is running a machine does 

1 Motley, P- 73. i Minnesota report, sec. xx, p. 378. 



16 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

not mean that less skill is required of him than of the old craftsmen; 
it may be that he must be more skillful. There are machines, how- 
ever, run by mere machine tenders who need have little intelligence 
or training. Such machines, requiring little or nothing but the 
indefinite repetition of a few simple motions, constitute in the 
demands from and consequent effects on the worker one of the 
greatest of our present-day problems. Another type of specializa- 
tion does not involve mere machine tending, but rather the sub- 
division of what was once one trade into a number of branches, in 
which the tendency is for the worker to learn and practice but one. 
Thus the most advanced practice in carpentry involves the special- 
ization of one man in door-hanging, another in tacking molding, 
another in laying floors, and so on. 

The speed at which modern industries are run, in the ceaseless 
effort to increase output and lessen cost, militates strongly against 
the possibility of an apprentice learning more than a branch of a 
trade. The foreman or superintendent is strongly led to keep the 
apprentice at that work for which he shows an aptitude. To change 
him from machine to machine or branch to branch of the trade 
involves for the time a decreased output; and modern competition, 
as a rule, leaves litt e thought for remote results, especially when 
whatever benefit is obtained in the future may be reaped by another. 
Such is the condition when the apprentice is earnestly seeking to 
learn the whole trade; but many trades are unable to secure enough 
good apprentices because of the long years of service at low pay. 
The boys or their parents are unwilling to make the sacrifice and far 
too often accept better immediate wage in industries of lower grade, 
with less promise for the future, instead of learning a good trade. 

This attitude, with technical factors in some industries, has re- 
sulted in bringing about what is called the special apprenticeship 
system. 1 Under this system the apprentice is indentured to one de- 
partment only of a trade, for a period varying from one to two years, 
as against the average for regular apprenticeships of about four years. 
Such a system has been adopted by the National Association of 
Machine Tool Builders who declare that they are confronted by a 
condition and not a theory. When boys are transferred from one 
department to another, there is a loss of immediate efficiency, on 
account of which high enough wages can not be paid to attract a 
sufficient number of boys. The only way to obtain apprentices 
enough was to pay higher wages, and this required giving the boys 
work that paid their employers from the start. Boys were accord- 
ingly taken for a trial period of 240 hours and then indentured to 
one of the 11 departments: Turning, vertical boring mill, horizontal 

Wright, pp. 77-78. 



THE APPRENTICESHIP SYSTEM. 17 

boring mill, planing, milling, drilling, grinding, erecting, turret, vise, 
and scraping. The narrow range of attention allowed rapid advance 
in proficiency and a correspondingly high wage. At the start 12 cents 
an hour was paid, increasing successively to 14, 16, and 18 cents, 
and as high as 20 cents after a year and a half. A general apprentice- 
ship frequently pays less near the end of a four years term than this 
special apprenticeship after a year's work. For comparison, the 
general apprenticeship under this association is three years, and the 
wages paid only 8, 10, and 13 cents an hour for the first, second, and 
third years, respectively. 

So strong are the tendencies toward this system, so manifest its 
advantages, that we are bound to see its great development. Yet its 
chief advantages are immediate, and it is subject to disadvantages 
whose force does not at once appear, but are none the less vital. From 
the standpoint of the industry, or of the employer, an increase in the 
extent of this system means a labor force less adaptable and mobile. 
We must recognize that there is a fundamental difference between 
this type of specialization and that of physicians, lawyers, and 
scientists. The latter specialize on the foundation of a broad general 
training; the specialized apprentice knows nothing but his speciality. 
The weaknesses of the system affect the apprentice most. An 
apprentice, if all goes well, may after the completion of one special 
apprenticeship take up another; but few are willing to do this; 
meaning, as the change would, a decrease in wage for the time being 
from 18 to 12 cents an hour. He may earn as much pay and have as 
regular work as if he knew the whole trade ; despite the fact that he 
will sooner exhaust the possibilities of interest in his work. But he 
has not the resource possessed by the man who is trained in the whole 
trade; his alternatives for employment are fewer, and a relatively 
slight change in industry or a dispute with his employer may leave 
him unable to obtain work. The displacement of workers trained in 
the whole trade by those acquainted with only a small part of it can 
scarcely fail to increase the dependence of workers on employers and 
so strike a blow at our democracy. Yet so great are the immediate 
advantages of this system to both employer and apprentice that we 
are likely to meet it in the future far more than we should like. Such 
specialization should be distinguished clearly from those forms where 
either the specialization is made on the basis of a previous broad 
training, as is usual in building carpentry; or, where the portion of a 
trade studied is so large and complex as to tax the abilities of the 
apprentice and give him considerable resource and alternative in later 
life, and is therefore tantamount in its extent to a whole trade of 
earlier years. Such subdivision of trades we must recognize as in the 
main necessary and desirable, in view of the great technical advances 
88740°— 13 2 



18 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

of recent years, which add greatly to their complexity, and are 
probably free from the chief disadvantages urged above against 
narrow and exclusive specialization. Finally, extreme specialization 
in some industries, as in boot and shoe or watch manufacture, has 
made any semblance of an apprenticeship system nigh impossible. 

In some trades the helper system is a substitute, in part at least, 
for apprenticeship. 1 The helper is an adult, and neither performs 
the same operations as the journeyman with whom he works nor is 
usually given any instruction in the latter's work. He "picks up" 
his trade if he can by watching the journeyman, and, occasionally, 
performs the operations of the trade proper. Helpers are largely 
present in the building and other trades where a man's strength is 
necessary. No definite term as a helper is usually necessary before 
entering the trade proper. The helper system is more important 
than apprenticeship in trades where experience is the chief factor in 
proficiency, as in printing and in the work of locomotive engineers. 
The fireman is the engineer's helper, as the brakeman is of the con- 
ductor, and each of these sets of helpers recruits the higher positions 
after passing through examinations. 

Three different groups of helpers may be roughly distinguished, 
according to Messrs. Weyl and Sakolski: "(1) Ordinary laborers; 
(2) 'improvers,' 'holders on,' or 'junior workmen'; and (3) handy 
men." 2 The ordinary laborers, as hod carriers, seldom become 
journeymen. The second group, "improvers" or "junior workmen," 
do work similar to that of the journeymen who supervise them. 
Their wages are 25 to 50 per cent lower than those of journeymen; 
hence they tend to do the latter's work whenever possible, unless 
prevented. "Handy men" do not work under journeymen, but do 
odd jobs and less skilled operations. They also come into competi- 
tion and conflict with the journeymen. 

The helper system tends to recruit the ranks of journeymen more 
rapidly than does apprenticeship, and so has given rise to many 
struggles between journeymen and helpers or employers. 

i Weyl, Walter E., and Sakolski, A. M. Conditions of entrance to the Principal Trades. Bulletin of the 
Bureau of Labor, No. 67, Nov., 1906, pp. 768-777. 
a Ibid., p. 770. 



CHAPTER II. 

OPINIONS OF EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED. 

What is the attitude of the employer toward the present situation, 
and what that of the employees ? In particular, how do they regard 
trade and technical schools as a means to help solve the practical 
problems confronting them? These are questions whose answers 
are of vital importance, for the cooperation of employers and 
employees alike is needed in any attempts at betterment. 

The attitude of employers and employees toward restriction of 
apprenticeship is well shown in an investigation conducted by Prof. 
Charles R. Richards, and published as Part I of the Report of the 
Bureau of Labor Statistics of New York State for 1908 on Industrial 
Training and in Part I of the similar Massachusetts report for 1906. 
Returns from New York show the following: Two hundred and one 
firms employed the full number of apprentices allowed by union 
rules, while only 128 do not do so. Only 172 firms are prevented 
by trade-union restrictions from employing as many apprentices 
as they otherwise would, while 263 are not so prevented. Out of 309 
firms stating that the apprenticeship system does not meet the need 
for skilled employees in their industry, 111 offer the trade-union 
restrictions as the cause of this lack, a larger number than favor any 
other single cause. 

The only firms that state both that trade-union restrictions pre- 
vent them from having as many apprentices as they would otherwise 
have, and that they are employing the maximum number of appren- 
tices allowed by union rules are glass blowing, book, job, and news- 
paper printing, bricklaying, electrical contracting, steam fitting, and 
tile setting. 1 Turning to the Massachusetts report we find questions 
and answers as follows: Is the apprenticeship system (if any) under 
the immediate control of the trade-unions? Twenty-one employers 
answer yes; 37, no; 46 union officers answer yes; 56, no. Do you 
consider it a good plan to restrict the number of apprentices ? The 
employers vote no by 41 to 5; the unionists, yes by 71 to 18. If the 
employer were permitted to employ as many apprentices as he wished, 
would he dispense with the services of the journeymen now employed; 
or, in other words, would he employ apprentices to the exclusion of 
journeymen? The employers vote 39 to 4 in the negative; the 
unionists declare assent by a vote of 67 to 20. 2 These figures speak 

J New York Bur. Labor Statistics, 26th An. Rep., 1908, Pt. I, pp. 29, 35, 36, 38-50. 
'Mass. Bur. Statistics of Labor Rep., 1906, Pt. I, pp. 6-11. 

19 



20 GERMAN" INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

for themselves. They show a natural disagreement of opinion 
between the parties concerned as to the results of trade-union restric- 
tion of apprentices. They also show, I think, that according to the 
employers' own opinion, the restrictions are less harmful than is 
usually thought by employees. So much for opinions on restrictions 
of apprentices. What attitudes do employers and employees take on 
the further questions of trade training ? 

The New York report mentioned above gives some statistics of the 
views of employers: Five hundred and forty-nine firms stated that 
they had difficulty in obtaining or in training skilled employees ; 569 
firms that they had no difficulty. The number of firms reporting that 
all of their skilled employees were trained in their establishment was 
74; that the majority were so trained, 435; that a few were there 
trained, 447 ; and that they had trained none of their skilled employees, 
210. 1 Where difficulty in obtaining or training skilled workers was 
reported, the minority of such workers were usually trained in the 
works; the firms that reported no such difficulty had trained the 
majority of their skilled workers. 

As typical of the views of employers may be taken the report of 
the committee on apprenticeship of the National Association of 
Builders, who say that "apprentices must be taught and mechanics 
made in the future by entirely different methods from those in vogue" 
under the old apprenticeship system. 2 The method proposed is by 
preparatory private trade schools, affiliated with but not run by an 
association of builders, and involving a shortening of the ensuing 
apprenticeship by at least a year. James W. Van Cleave, ex-president 
of the National Association of Manufacturers, advocates a manual- 
training department in every public primary school and in free indus- 
trial high schools. 3 The committee on industrial education of the 
American Foundrymen's Association advocates industrial continua- 
tion schools which should become differentiated into trade schools as 
the pupils reach the age of 16. 3 These views of employers, favorable 
to trade and technical education, may be taken as representative. 
Carroll D. Wright declares: 

All employers realize the importance of this kind of education [that is, public 
industrial education]. Those who can afford it prefer their own system. * * * 
But it is very rare to find an employer opposed to some scheme of industrial education.* 

Wright further states : 

Careful investigation shows that the demand for trade schools comes from employers 
who have no systematic, definite method of training their apprentices. These men 
are of the opinion that a public trade school would furnish them with a supply of 

i N. Y. Rep., p. 15. 

'Minn. Rep., pp. 435,436. 
» Rep. of special committee on indus. educ, Amer. Fed. of Labor, 1910. 

Wright, p. 69. 



OPINIONS OF EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED. 21 

skilled mechanics. Generally they have no more realization of the probable results 
of a public trade school, as far as producing skilled mechanics is concerned, than they 
have of the possibilities of a first-class apprenticeship system in their own works. 1 

These remarks, it should be noted, apply only to trade and not to 
the more general type ol industrial schools. Those firms which have 
a first-class apprenticeship system themselves generally feel that no 
public trade school could meet their needs, but they are not opposed 
to such schools in general and desire them for the industry at large. 2 

The New York report mentioned above presents the results of 
questions asked of 1,182 employers and of the officers of 2,451 unions 
in the chief industries of the State, showing the attitude toward dif- 
ferent types of industrial and trade schools. 3 The question was 
asked: "Do you favor a public industrial or preparatory trade school 
which should endeavor to reach boys and girls between 14 and 16 
who now leave the common school in very large numbers before 
graduation? Such a school would not teach a trade, but would 
give a wide acquaintance with the materials and fundamental proc- 
esses, together with drawing and shop mathematics, with the object 
of giving a better preparation for entering industries at 16 and better 
opportunities for subsequent advancement." To this both employers 
and unionists replied in the affirmative; the employers by a vote of 
840 to 248, the unionists by one of 1,500 to 349. Among the manu- 
facturers the different industrial groups favored this type of school in 
the following order: "Machine and metal manufacturers, building 
trades, wood manufacturers, printing and paper manufacturers, glass 
manufacturers, textile industries, clothing trades, leather manu- 
facturers, confectioners." The skilled trades are thus most strongly 
in favor of such schools, and the only group opposed is the cigar 
makers. The question, put somewhat differently to the two groups, 
was asked whether trade schools for boys and girls were favored, 
which should give one or two years of practical training together 
with drawing and mathematics, provided (this part of the question 
sent to the unionists only) graduates should serve two years as appren- 
tices or improvers. Both groups answered affirmatively, but by a 
less overwhelming vote than that for the more general type of indus- 
trial schools; the employers voted 744 to 341, the unionists by 1,232 
to 567. The order in which the different groups of employers favored 
these schools is as follows: "Machine and metal manufacturing, 
building trades, leather manufacturing (chiefly boots and shoes), 
wood manufacturing, printing trades, textile industries, clothing 
industries, manufacture of cigars." Employers were further asked 
whether they thought the proposed trade schools could be " advan- 
tageously administered by the State or community at public expense 

i Wright, 5. 78. 2 Ibid., p. 69. « N. Y. Kep., pp. 38-50. 



22 



GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 



and operated on a noncommercial product." To this they replied 
in the affirmative by a vote of 582 to 348. Their answer to the ques- 
tion: Would such schools, if conducted by industrial establishments 
and operating on a commercial product, be practical ? was negative 
by 529 to 405 votes. Thus every group of employers, with the 
exceptions of those manufacturing leather, cigars, and confectionery, 
preferred State or community to private management. Finally, to 
the query, would practical evening or half-time schools be of value in 
helping unskilled workers or those of low-grade skill to advanced posi- 
tions requiring high-grade skill, the employers reply affirmatively by a 
vote of 738 to 305. The relative faith of the employers in the various 
classes of schools is indicated by the following table from the New 
York report: 1 



Industries. 


General 

industrial 

schools. 


Trade 
schools. 


Evening 
schools. 




1 
1 
1 
2 
1 
1 
1 
1 
3 
1 


3 
3 
3 
1 
2 
2 
2 
3 
1 
3 


2 




2 


Wood 


2 




3 




3 




3 




3 




2 




2 




2 







A considerable number of employers thought evening trade and tech- 
nical schools desirable. It was the general industrial school which won 
first place in the opinions of almost all; and it is noticeable that trade 
schools were placed last by all the industries commonly called highly 
skilled, except the printing trades. The net result, from both employ- 
ers and unionists, is that general industrial schools are overwhelmingly 
desired ; day trade and evening trade and technical schools are also 
desired, but less vigorously. 

The National Association of Manufacturers has, since 1904, recog- 
nized the importance of the question of industrial education by the 
appointment of a committee which has reported annually since 1905. 
This committee, stirred by a realization of the paucity of skilled 
mechanics, has persistently advocated industrial schools. Moreover, 
it has claimed that trade schools alone can turn out finished workmen, 
without the need for any apprenticeship. In 1910, the committee 
went into the question of the sort of schools to be desired, and reported 
as follows: 

Great progress has been made throughout the country in approaching general 
agreement on the following points: 

1. That the interests of manufacturing industry require a new education for boys 
who are to work with tools and machines. 

IN. Y. Report, p. 49. 



OPINIONS OP EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED. 23 

2. That thiB industrial education must consist of skill and schooling and that these 
two parts are of equal importance; that they must be organically combined and that 
each will coordinate and supplement the other. 

3. That real skill and suitable schooling can not usually be given in the ordinary 
public school by the average schoolmaster. 

4. That the average manufacturing shop or factory is not likely to organize private 
trade-school departments in their works that will give the best results in both skill 
and schooling. 

5. That real trade schools are feasible and practicable where a higher practical, 
efficient shop skill can be secured than has ever been known under the ordinary ap- 
prenticeships, and that this is possible even when one-half of the apprentice's time is 
devoted to schooling adapted to the life of the pupil. 

6. That such half-time trade schools can be so organized and conducted that a 
superior high skill and a broader shop experience can be secured than the average 
manufacturing shop can give in its specialized modern factory, because there the ob- 
ject is to make money and not to make skilled, intelligent, trained workmen. 

7. That such a real trade school must have well-equipped, productive shops, where 
pupils are taught the best methods of rapid, high-grade production by skilled working 
mechanics. 

8. That such trade schools need not produce anything but useful, high-grade prod- 
ucts, with a very small percentage of spoiled work or damage to tools and equipment — 
a smaller percentage of loss than occurs in the average shop. 

9. That where such a trade school can be established, with modern buildings and 
equipment and a moderate working capital, well managed, it will not only be an effi- 
cient educational institution, covering the high-school period, but it will be productive 
and largely self-supporting. 

10. That such a real trade school can be maintained with a course corresponding to 
the high-school course, persistently aiming to turn out working mechanics with superior 
mechanical skill and wide shop experience, plus good mental training. In this way 
a class of skilled American mechanics will be produced, meriting higher wages than 
the average mechanic, and the greatest good will come to wholesome organized labor 
and to individuals through individual merit. 1 

The committee further reports in favor of evening schools (gen- 
eral, industrial, and trade), half-day schooling each week for appren- 
tices and other workers where the employer is willing to pay 
the regular wages while they attend school, and part-time schools. 
These schools are primarily to meet the needs of those now in industry. 
Similar schools are favored for girls and women, in which, besides 
industrial studies, home economics shall be given a large place. 
These several proposals constitute a highly important body of sug- 
gestions, which, if they are at all adequately backed up by the 
membership of the association, represent a great advance in definite- 
ness of attitude toward industrial education. Whether or not we 
can wholly accept the program presented, I shall discuss in the 
conclusion. 

In 1911 the committee on industrial education, having changed its 
personnel in part and studied the question further, reported again, 
this time very differently from their 1910 report. They no longer 
champion trade schools, but, as a consequence of German and other 

1 Proc. loth an. conven. Nat. Assoc. Manufacturers, New York, May, 1910, pp. 259, 260. 



24 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

European example, focus their attention and chief approval on 
industrial improvement schools. The National Association of 
Manufacturers, following their report, passed the following reso- 
lutions : 

Resolved, That this association earnestly devote itself, with reasonable outlay of 
funds, to the promotion of industrial education, to the end that such education may 
be made available, as soon as possible, to every child who needs it. 

Resolved, That we favor the establishment in every community of continuation 
schools, wherein the children of 14 to 18 years of age now in the industries shall be in- 
structed in the science and art of their respective industries and in citizenship. 1 

Unionists have been much criticized for their opposition to trade 
and industrial schools. They did not for a long time understand the 
situation clearly, and many do not yet do so. Generally speaking, 
however, the attitude of union men has steadily become more and 
more favorable, until the approval indicated in the New York report 
has become a fact. The main stumbling block which prevented 
union approval of such schools was apparently the impression that 
their graduates were sometimes used as strike breakers, and that the 
atmosphere of the schools was often either hostile to unionism or not 
distinctly favorable. The charge that trade schools were used to 
displace skilled unionists by "half-baked" school boys, temporarily 
or permanently, caused unionists in many instances to regard them as 
"scab hatcheries." But if the graduates of trade schools are able 
to displace skilled laborers, does not this indicate that they are able 
to do the work required; and if so, do they not deserve the places? 
On the other hand, if they are distinctly inferior as workmen, why 
should the skilled workers fear them, and how can they, in fact, dis- 
place their superiors? I believe that no one answer to these ques- 
tions is sufficient. Some of the work, doubtless, now done by superior 
workmen, masters of their trades, can be done substantially as well 
and at lower cost by inferior half-trained workmen who would be 
unable to perform many of the more difficult operations of the same 
trade. 

The skilled workmen fear partial displacement by some such half- 
trained workers, the chief advantage of whom to the employer is that 
they are cheap. Temporarily also an employer may secure poor 
workmen to tide him over for a few weeks as best they may, in order 
to win a strike. Further, the presence on the market of a large num- 
ber of poorly trained or of half-trained workers, does, I think, tend, 
through the difficulty of dealing with individuals strictly on their 
several merits, toward a lowering of the standards and thus of the 
wages of the whole group of workers. But in the main I believe that 
those who possess developed skill need not greatly fear those who do 
not possess it, and that unionists are in no serious danger from the 

i Kep. of committee on indus. educ, 16th an. conven., New York, May, 1911, Nat. Assoc, of Manufacturers. 



OPINION'S OP EMPLOYERS AND EMPLOYED. 25 

graduates of trade schools, except where they are now maintaining 
a monopoly of skill. 

But unionists may retort that trade schools have in the past 
flooded some trades and have supplied strike breakers to employers 
by virtue of the superior advantages furnished to enter those trades 
as compared with others. Private money-making schools are es- 
pecially condemned on this score, and judgment is often reserved 
concerning even philanthropic trade schools till these have shown 
themselves at least not antagonistic to trade union principles and prac- 
tice. Admitting the alleged facts, what is the remedy ? It is better 
facilities for learning all trades, as far as obtaining these is feasible. 
Then the number and capacity of the intrants into the several 
trades will tend to adjust themselves toward that condition where 
men of equal capacity and opportunities will be in trades of equal 
attractiveness. Increase of freedom in industrial and trade educa- 
tion will tend toward securing the best men for the trades needing 
them and able to pay them most, and thus to offer them most attrac- 
tions toward securing less able men for less important positions, and 
so on to the lowest rung of the ladder. If unionists are trying to 
maintain wages and conditions of work, by restriction of intrants 
into their trades beyond what is necessary to uphold the standards 
of skill and prevent such excessive influx as would lower the wage 
below what equal ability secures elsewhere, they are doing injustice 
to those who would otherwise enter the trades concerned. 

It has been noted above that unionists favor general industrial 
much more than trade schools. Their attitude, moreover, varies 
greatly with the trade concerned. They favor evening schools, for 
these seek principally to help those already in the trades and involve 
no danger of unduly increasing the supply of workers. Corre- 
spondence schools for like reason meet their approval. Apprentice or 
factory schools they generally approve, because of their practicability 
and because there is no undue increase in the number of workers. 
They are as yet opposed to cooperative schools, for reasons explained 
in the next chapter. 1 

The unionists probably appreciate the disadvantage of a too narrow 
specialization more than employers do, for the resulting burden falls 
chiefly on them. Thus the committee on industrial education of the 
American Federation of Labor, in a report which gives unanimous 
support to industrial education, states the principle that "public 
industrial schools or schools for trade training should never become 
so narrow in their scope as to prevent an all-round shop training," 2 
and they further refer to "the injustice of narrow and prescribed 
training in selected trades by both private and public instruction." 3 
To conclude this presentation of the attitude of organized labor, I 

i Ch. 3, pp. 33, 34. s Amer. Fed. of Labor Rep., 1910, p. 24. » Ibid., p. 13. 



26 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

cite the main provisions of the Page- Wilson bill, now before the 
Federal Congress. This bill is based on the Davis bill, 1 called 
in the American Federation of Labor Report: "Labor's Bill for 
Congressional Enactment." The bill can not, however, be said to 
represent exclusively any class. In the form reached July 24, 
1912, it provides for annual appropriations by the National Gov- 
ernment to the States, of a total, when in full force, of $14,780,000. 
Of this sum three million dollars is to maintain instruction in 
agriculture, industries, and home economics in departments of sec- 
ondary schools. Three millions is to maintain instruction in the 
industries and home economics in separate secondary schools for 
the purpose. Three millions is to maintain instruction in agricul- 
ture and home economics in district agricultural high schools. 
Six hundred and forty thousand dollars is to maintain training 
for teachers of these vocational subjects in colleges, and one million 
dollars for similar training in normal schools. All the above grants 
are conditioned on the providing of a total of State and local 
appropriations equal to twice that of the Nation, in addition to any 
any costs of land or buildings. One million dollars is appropriated 
annually for branch agricultural experiment stations, and sums ris- 
ing to a maximum of $3,140,000, annually for extension departments 
of State universities; these grants being conditional on the spending 
of an equal amount in total by State and locality, for the same pur- 
pose, besides providing permanent plant. All these grants are con- 
ditional on supervision by the Federal Government, in cooperation 
with State boards for vocational education, and the maintenance of 
certain standards. 

With this evidence of the favorable attitude of the highest body of 
organized labor in this country, let us turn to another phase of the 
question. I have so far been concerned with the need for industrial 
education, which is shown in the condition of industry in the country 
to-day, and which is reflected in the views of those most intimately 
acquainted with these conditions. I shall now take up the question 
of how far those needs have been met in the United States. What 
industrial schools have we, and what are they accomplishing for 
industry ? 

» Amer. Fed. of Labor Rep., 1910, pp. 20-22. 



CHAPTER III. 

INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 

In the early days of our country, school and shop and farm were 
widely separated in function. Trades were so well taught by appren- 
ticeship or by parents to their children that there was little need for 
the schools to dabble in industry and try to help in vocational training. 
These early conditions and similar ones preceding them, together 
with the scholastic ideals, are responsible for the rise of a tradition, 
especially among the schoolmen, that has been very hard to weaken- 
that the school should have nothing to do with industry. Its function 
was more general — to provide that mental equipment which is 
requisite in all walks of life. Thus the schools limited their efforts to 
the instruments of communication, and the superstructure reared on 
these, of history, literature, and science. As our society went through 
its marvelous development, and the apprenticeship system weakened, 
the schools maintained their traditional position, and the gap between 
them and industry became ever wider. Yet a variety of special types 
of schools arose from time to time which sought, apart from the 
regular public school system and its pinnacle of classical colleges, to 
bridge the chasm, to bring education into closer touch with life, and 
to minister to the needs of industry. 

First among these were the privately endowed evening industrial 
schools, such as Cooper Union and the Mechanic's Institute of New 
York City, Franklin Union and Spring Garden Institute of Philadel- 
phia, the Ohio Mechanic's Institute of Cincinnati, and the Mechanic's 
Institute of Richmond, Va. These schools, according to Dr. Charles 
R. Richards, 1 were almost all founded, or opened evening classes, dur- 
ing the fifties. They met with such a great demand for their services 
that similar public schools should have been called into the field, but 
the scholastic ideal was too firmly seated to make this feasible. The 
next development was the inauguration of institutes of technology, 
in the period of railroad and mining expansion following the Civil War. 
The Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute had, indeed, been founded in 
1824, but its example was not emulated until 1865, when the Massa- 
chusetts Institute of Technology was established, followed within a 
few years by the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Lehigh University, 

i Richards, C. R.: Notes on Hist, of Indus. Educ. in U. S., in Nat. Educ. Assoc. Rep. of Committee on 
Place of Industries in Public Education, 1910, pp. 24-29. Compare also for facts below as to history of indus- 
trial education in the United States. 

27 



28 GERMAN" INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

and Stevens Institute of Technology. These institutions were pri- 
vate, but were soon followed by similar ones of a public nature. The 
Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1 862 has by its financial support, amount- 
ing to over $16,000,000, aided about 60 State universities and 
other institutions which carry on agricultural and technological edu- 
cation. 1 Some of the agricultural colleges coming under this act, and 
situated in the South, now offer genuine trade training not 
leading to a degree. Another movement, which began in 1868 
by the founding of Hampton Institute in Virginia, was the indus- 
trial education of the negro race, a movement carried on with 
signal success in a most difficult field. In 1870 industrial drawing 
was introduced into the schools of Massachusetts, from which the 
movement has spread, until now the subject is generally required in 
the cities and larger towns. Manual training had its first beginnings 
about 1870 under European influence, while manual training high 
schools began to be founded about 1880. This movement spread 
rapidly, entered the primary school after 1887, and is now very widely 
spread throughout the country. In 1872, the first school of design 
was founded in Lowell, Mass., as an aid to the textile industry. Stim- 
ulated by this example, other similar schools and several textile schools 
have grown. 

Trade schools proper are of comparatively recent origin. The first, 
the New York Trade School, was founded on private endowment in 
1881. During the next 20 years only two important schools which 
trained in the mechanical trades were founded. These were the Wil- 
liamson Free School of Mechanical Trades, near Philadelphia, and the 
Baron de Hirsch Trade School in New York City. These schools, 
together with the Miller School, of Albemarle, Va., which adds trade 
to general training, and two schools in San Francisco are all privately 
endowed. Not till 1907 were public trade schools established, begin- 
ning with the taking over of the Milwaukee School of Trades by the city 
under State law. Since then, trade schools have been opened in a 
number of cities. 2 Within the last few years, also, general industrial 
or preparatory trade schools have been much discussed and have been 
established as parts of the public school system in Rochester, Albany, 
and New York, and in six other cities in New York State ; in Newton, 
New Bedford, and other Massachusetts cities, and elsewhere. Within 
the past few years, also, the so-called half-time system, or cooperation 
between school and shop, has arisen. 

Such, in outline, have been the successive stages of the rise of the 
agencies of industrial education, to the consideration of which I 
shall now turn. Uncoordinated one with another, they have grown 

i Seventeenth An. Rep. Commissioner of Labor, 1902, pp. 19-24. (A chief source, with Richards: 
Notes, etc.) 
2Cf. p. 34. 



INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 29 

up spontaneously, chiefly as the result of private initiative. We have 
no system of industrial education in the United States. And despite 
the expenditure of a considerable amount of energy and money on 
those schools and phases of our schools which are industrial in aim, 
the result is, for the great mass of citizens, very small indeed. We 
pride ourselves on democracy in education, and yet our higher 
technical schools are far more fullv developed, and far more nearly 
meet the country's industrial needs, than our lower schools. In- 
deed the lower schools are all but lacking; the schools of the country 
are, as related to industry, top-heavy. Our institutes of technology 
and engineering schools and universities, which train industrial 
leaders and technologists, compare favorably with the best in Europe. 
But so meager is the provision for the masses that Mr. A. C. Hum- 
phreys, president of Stevens Institute, states the following results 
of an inquiry conducted by the international committee of the 
Young Men's Christian Associations : * Of 13,000,000 young men in 
the United States between 21 and 35, only 5 per cent have received 
in the schools any direct preparation for their vocations; of every 
100 graduates of our elementary schools, only 8 obtain their liveli- 
hood by means of professional and commercial pursuits while 92 
support themselves by manual labor. 

Of all the schools or parts of schools in the United States which 
have an industrial character the following will be omitted from con- 
sideration: Agricultural schools, schools for negroes or Indians, higher 
technical or engineering schools, and industrial art schools. The 
attempt will be made to discover what has been done to forward 
industrial education for the great masses in industry. First in order, 
let us examine the manual training classes and manual training high 
schools. 

Manual training began in the United States with schools of second- 
ary grade and percolated downward into the elementary schools. 2 
The educators who introduced it desired, in the words of one of their 
leaders, Dr. H. H. Bemeld— 

to offer to boys what was called a more "practical" education than that offered by 
the ordinary high school; while avoiding a trade school, to give the boy an acquaint- 
ance with the forces and conditions of modern life, to give him the use of his hands* 
or, as Dr. Woodward phrased it, "to put the whole boy to school. " 3 

Educators have quite generally regarded manual training as another 
mode of cultural training and as a means of formal discipline, valuable 
to train the observation and reasoning powers and to strengthen the 
will. "The manual-training high school," according to the National 
Education Association committee, "has never claimed to fit boys 

1 Nat. Soc. for Promo, of Indus. Educ, Proc. 3d annual meeting, Bull. No. 10, p. 28. 
*Nat. Educ. Assoc. Rep., pp. 80-115. 
»Ibid., p. 86. 



30 GERMAN" INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

directly for industrial pursuits." 1 A succinct definition states that 
a manual- training high school is "a high school with a course in 
manual training in lieu of Latin and Greek." 2 

The records of graduates of these schools show that they do not 
train for the trades to an appreciable extent. Their graduates follow 
the most diverse lines, just as in any other high schools, as business 
and the professions, while a number go on to the higher technical 
schools and a number enter trades. According to the Massachusetts 
commission, out of 2,437 manual- training school students whose rec- 
ords were available but 52 were in mechanical trades. Further, the 
committee of the National Education Association declare that "with 
few notable exceptions, practically all of the existing industrial and 
technical high schools now operating in the United States as parts of 
the public-school system should be classed as manual- training high 
schools," according to the definition above, and not as technical high 
schools whose purpose is distinctly vocational, the training of indus- 
trial leaders of the lower grades. The general public expected from 
this movement more practical industrial results . These have not been 
forthcoming; but manual training has made for itself an enviable 
place in our system of general education, furnished its students a 
wider outlook from which to choose a vocation, and commended itself 
to large numbers of people. It is now probably best that the move- 
ment be continued as it is, and that the industrial function be accom- 
plished by other schools, independent of our existing system in whole 
or in part, and managed primarily by men in close touch with industry. 

Much more hopeful for industry is the recent inauguration of 
apprentice schools in shops. 3 A number of larger manufacturing and 
railroad companies, to increase the efficiency of their employees or 
to train up a generation of workers, have instituted schools in which 
their apprentices are taught such subjects as mechanical draw- 
ing, reading of drawings, shop arithmetic, strength of materials, 
mechanics, electricity, testing of machines, etc. The detailed ar- 
rangements differ from shop to shop, but in general the teaching is 
very practical, is intimately connected with the shop work, and is 
carried on by the method of concrete problems. The apprentices 
are usually paid for their time while in the school, just as in the shops, 
and are held to the same standards of attendance and discipline. 
Special teachers in many cases instruct the boys, generally in the 
school, sometimes in the shop also; the course of study- is often care- 
fully laid out by the consulting engineer or by some member of the 
firm. In some cases, as in the General Electric Co.'s plant at Lynn, 
Mass., a special apprentice training room is set aside for the purpose, 
and here the boys work at machines isolated from the rest of the 

*Nat. Educ. Assoc. Rep., p. 95. 

*Ibid., p. 87. 

8 Wright, pp. 28-56; Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 11, pp. 72-81. 



INDUSTEIAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 31 

factory. In some cases shifts of boys are kept alternately at the 
machines and in the school, thus obtaining the fullest possible 
utilization of the machines and of the services of the teacher. Usually 
only a few hours a week are spent in the school, though in some cases 
as much as half the time is so occupied. In the shop, the apprentices 
are usually advanced from machine to machine or department to 
department as fast as they become proficient, or at stated intervals. 
Sometimes they are required before leaving a machine to instruct 
another boy concerning it. In some few cases employees other than 
apprentices may also enter the apprentice classes. Prizes or other 
recognition of good work are often granted as useful stimuli. 

Some companies conduct the schools largely to provide future 
foremen, designers, superintendents, and technical experts. In 
some cases examinations are held for those who desire to become 
apprentices, and also to determine proficiency on completion of the 
course; in others a common school education and physical fitness are 
required for entrance, while graduation or proficiency is attested by 
the personal knowledge of the teacher. The popularity of these 
apprenticeships is attested by the fact that in the better companies, 
at least, there are many candidates on the waiting list, and the 
companies can select the best fitted boys. Trial periods are the 
rule, as in most apprenticeships, and then the signing of a regular 
indenture. The school course usually lasts as long as the appren- 
ticeship, and a good grade of work is required for its successful 
completion. The boys usually appreciate the superior advantages 
they receive for a thorough trade training and are often enthusiastic 
for their company. Some of the companies which have adopted 
systems of this sort are (with number of hours of schooling given a 
week): The Fore River Shipbuilding Co. (18 hours for 7 months); 
the New York Central lines (4 hours); the Santa Fe Railroad (4 
hours); the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Co., East 
Pittsburgh, Pa. (4 hours) ; the International Harvester Co., Chicago, 
111.; the Allis-Chalmers Co., of Cincinnati, Ohio; the General Electric 
Co., West Lynn, Mass. (7^ hours) ; the Lakeside Press, Chicago, 111. 
(21 hours, 2 years out of 7); and the Solvay Co., Syracuse, N. Y. 
(alternate weeks in school and shop). 1 These companies and others 
which have adopted the system in some form are in the main large 
companies, and so far with them the system has worked well. 

This suggests the query whether the system is applicable to com- 
panies of any size or only to large firms. The smallest number in 
any apprentice school conducted by a manufacturing company of 
which I have data is 28, the largest number 206, while the average is 
69 apprentices. The railways show a much lower average, owing to 
the fact that at most division points there are but few apprentices; 

1 These data chiefly from Wright, pp. 2S-56. 



32 GEKMAN INDTJSTBIAL EDUCATION. 

61 railways have 8,367 apprentices in 406 schools, or an average 
of not quite 21 to a school. The hiring of a special instructor for so 
few apprentices would be too expensive and is not strictly necessary; 
for these reasons the shop superintendent, chief draftsman, or 
other regular employee generally conducts the instruction and 
supervision, and in some cases the instruction covers little more than 
mechanical drawing. So far as the present experience with shop 
schools goes, it seems that instruction of comparatively few appren- 
tices is feasible, that in most cases a small or medium-sized shop can 
not afford a special instructor, and that the apprentices thus lose in 
thoroughness of instruction. As to the smallest shops, the plan 
does not seem feasible for them. Even a class of 15 or 20 apprentices 
is not possible except in an establishment of from about 60 to 400 
workers. In some industries, as in the building trades, the system 
is not applicable at all. The system is new, however, and may 
become a good solution of a part of the general problem. Railroad 
men are especially inclined to hold that no trade school can meet 
the highly special needs of their industry. 

A modification of the system of apprenticeship schools in the shop * 
is found in an apprenticeship system where instruction is given 
outside of the shop but under the direction of the employers. The 
North End Union School of Printing, of Boston, is owned and con- 
ducted by an association of master printers. It offers one year of 
trade schooling at a cost of $100 to the boy, to take the place of the 
first two years of an ordinary apprenticeship, and then apprentice- 
ship for four years to some master printer at a guaranteed wage 
steadily increasing from $9 to $18 a week. Some other firms " en- 
courage" boys to attend night schools, but neither require such 
attendance nor offer adequate incentive to them to do so. Such 
systems are too weak to accomplish much. 2 The Baldwin Locomo- 
tive Works and some other firms, however, require their apprentices 
to attend evening school and study mechanical drawing and other 
courses in line with their shopwork. 2 

Akin to the last-named type is the part-time system, or coopera- 
tion between school and shop. 3 In this type the employers and a 
school or schools, usually public, divide the time of the apprentices 
according to different proportions, the bulk of the time usually being 
spent in the shops. The instruction given is technical, relating to 
shopwork, though it may include also some of a business and of a 
civic nature. In Beverly, Mass., the apprentices of the United Shoe 
Machinery Co. alternate, in two groups of 25 each, between the Beverly 
(public) industrial school and the shop. The boys are paid half the 
regular piece price for their work, and the company assumes the cost 
of the shop. In Fitchburg, Mass., apprentices of mechanical trades 

i Wright, pp. 57-67. " Ibid., pp. 56-67. 

s Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 11, pp. 111-115. 



INDUSTKIAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 33 

are given one full year in the high school, followed by three years of 
alternate weeks in the shops of manufacturers as apprentices and in 
school. In Cincinnati, Ohio, apprentices are taught in an improve- 
ment or continuation school of the city for 4 hours a week and 48 
weeks in the year. 1 "The school teaches the three R's, civics, me- 
chanical drawing, blueprint reading, and good citizenship. Much 
attention is given to shop mathematics." Beyond the scope of the 
present inquiry, but illustrative of the part-time system applied to 
engineering education, is the cooperative plan between the Univer- 
sity of Cincinnati and the manufacturers of that city, by which engi- 
neering students who are accepted by the manufacturers are enrolled 
also in the university, and regularly indentured for a six-year course, 
in which shop and school are closely coordinated. 2 During college 
term they spend alternate weeks in school and shop, and when col- 
lege is closed they work regularly in the shops. They are paid for 
their work in the shops at rates which total about $2,000 for the six 
years. Though spending only half the time at the university that is 
spent by those taking the regular 4-year engineering course, the ap- 
prentice students did three-quarters of the work done by the latter, 
with grades 25 per cent better. This system for training industrial 
leaders is, so far as it has gone, a success. 

To the extension of such cooperative systems between public 
schools and shops, trade unionism offers strenuous objection. In the 
report of the special committee on industrial education of the Ameri- 
can Federation of Labor, the following statements are found as to this 
system: 3 

The manufacturer is not obliged to take any boy or to keep any boy. On the other 
hand, the high school is obliged to educate all duly qualified boys, to give them all 
that the city provides. * * * The people have no hand in this plan. * * * 
Under this plan the veto power over the boy's right to public industrial education is 
in the hands of the manufacturer. 

The committee points out that a manufacturer could refuse to 
take or keep a boy who should take a definite stand for trade union- 
ism or whose father should have done the same; that the coopera- 
tion would so bind the hands of the teachers that they could offer 
but little resistance to inculcation by the employer of antiunion 
principles, and that a spirit of undemocratic exclusiveness would be 
apt to arise among the accepted boys against their excluded fellows. 
To sum up, they state that: 

Any scheme of education which depends for its carrying out on a private group, 
subject to no public control, leaves unsolved the fundamental democratic problem 
of giving the boys of the country an equal opportunity and the citizens the power to 
criticize and reform their educational machinery. 

> Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 11, p. 115. 2 Wright, pp. S4ff. 

* Amer. Fed. of Labor Report, pp. 11, 12. 

88740°— 13 3 



34 GERMAN" INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

These objections must be borne in mind, but it seems as if no 
scheme for training our future workers wholly or in part in the shops 
could be made independent of the selection of those trained by the 
employer. The conclusion would seem to be that, if the cooperative 
system for industrial training increases in extent, other means of 
industrial training should be also kept open to our boys. 

Despite recent increases in the number of public technical and 
trade schools, private schools, which are first in the field, are still 
the more numerous and exercise the greater influence on the indus- 
trial situation. Of these the New York Trade School, founded in 
1880, was first in offering short trade courses in the building trades, 
taking day students about four months for completion; while the 
Baron de Hirsch School, also in New York City and founded in 1891 
for Hebrews, offers short day courses of five and one-half months, 
leading to the position of helper. In San Francisco, the Wilmerding 
School of Industrial Art for Boys, established in 1900, offers four- 
year courses in the building trades, with the practical side to the fore 
and occupying the entire last two years. Other schools privately 
endowed like the above exist in small numbers and offer courses 
varying in length from the short four or five months' courses to those 
lasting several years. The latter include generally a modicum of 
general academic training and a larger share of technical work. Some, 
as the Manhattan Trade School for Girls, are exclusively for girls. 

In very recent years States and cities have taken up the establish- 
ment of trade schools 1 and founded the following: State trade schools, 
at New Britain and Bridgeport, Conn.; the Worcester Trade School, 
Worcester, Mass.; the Wisconsin State Mining Trade School, at 
Platteville, Wis.; Saunders' School of Trades, Yonkers, N. Y.; the 
Portland School of Trades, Portland, Oreg. ; the Philadelphia Trades 
School; the Columbus Trades School, Columbus, Ohio; the Mil- 
waukee School of Trades for Boys; the Girls' Trade School, of Boston, 
Mass.; the New York Trade School for Girls, Syracuse, N. Y.; and 
the Milwaukee School of Trades for Girls. These schools do not differ 
materially from the privately endowed schools whose example they 
follow. A number of private trade schools run for profit are also 
in the field, offering generally very short courses of three or four 
months. This type of school assumes to train journeymen, and meets 
the most determined opposition of the trade-unions. 

A similar group of day technical schools, mostly private, ministers 
to a more general need. 2 There is much ambiguity in the use of 
the terms ''industrial" and "technical" as applied to schools, and 
they are often used interchangeably. Industrial schools are in the 
broadest sense any and all schools which have a function or purpose 

iNat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 11, pp. 22-51; and 25th An. Rep. Commis. of Labor, 1910, 
Indus. Educ, pp. 91-141. 
2 Nat. Soc. Promot, Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 11, pp. 52-72. 



INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 35 

directly related to industry; in the narrower sense they are those 
schools which train in the general aspects or bases of industry, as 
drawing, mechanics, and applied mathematics, but do not specialize 
their training to the extent of teaching specific trades. Technical 
schools are those which instruct in the technic of industry in general 
or of special industries, particularly the latter. Thus a polytechnic 
school is one which concerns itself with the special technics of a num- 
ber of industries. A technical school aims to teach the science as 
distinguished from the art of a trade or industry. It aims primarily 
to show the student the meaning of the processes studied rather than 
to train him to dexterity in their execution. Many schools are part 
technical, part trade schools, but the functions are more or less dis- 
tinct. No school is a trade school proper which fails to teach the 
pupils to perform the actual processes of the trade, and merely makes 
clear to them the meaning of those processes. 1 Thus a trade 
school is primarily concerned with the art as distinguished from the 
science of a trade or industry. A trade school need not attempt to 
take the place of an apprenticeship. 2 The textile schools, established 
in Massachusetts under State law of 1895 and elsewhere are technical 
and not trade schools, and expect practical experience in their pupils, 
either before or accompanying their school work. 

Since 1906 a new type of school has arisen rapidly. This is the 
general industrial preparatory trade or vocational school, of which 
there were 12 in 1910, all public, 3 9 of them founded in 1909, and 8 in 
New York State. These schools aim to attract and retain in school 
for two or three years those pupils who would otherwise leave at the 
completion of the common-school grades or before, to turn their 
attention toward the opportunities offered in the manual trades and 
to furnish such basic industrial training as will provide industrial 
intelligence and make for rapid advancement in subsequent appren- 
ticeship. The work is usually about equally divided between class- 
room and shop and becomes more specialized toward the end of the 
course. It is this class of school which was strongly desired by both 
employers and employees, according to the New York report quoted 
above. 

Such schools would aim to instruct their pupils in the elements of 
both theory and practice of those processes fundamental or common to 
a group of trades. Such groups of trades or industries (or workers), 
important in the United States, are: (1) Woodworking industries; 
(2) iron and steel working industries; (3) bookbinding and pasting 
trades; (4) printers' trades; (5) leather-working industries; (6) tex- 
tile industries (factory type); (7) clothing trades; (8) engineers and 
firemen (and representing ' 'less evident possibilities of approach for 

1 See preface, p. 7. 

2 An opposing view is presented in 25th An. Rep. Com. Labor, p. 15. 
» Nat. Soc. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 11, pp. 8-22. 



36 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

the intermediate industrial school"); (9) stone-working industries; 
(10) clay and glass industries (using furnaces); (11) paint, paper, 
and plaster industries; (12) food manufacturing industries; (13) to- 
bacco industries; and (14) miners and quarrymen. 1 The existing 
schools of this type have naturally tended to specialize their efforts 
to meet the needs of industries locally important. 2 This will doubt- 
less continue to be done, as there will be neither need nor usually 
means for such a school to train in all of the groups of trades mentioned 
above, or similar ones. 

More important than any of these types of schools in their present 
influence on the industrial situation, whatever the future may bring, 
are the numerous evening schools. 3 These are of many kinds, public, 
privately owned, and profit seeking, and both technical and trade 
schools or a combination of the two. Most of the day trade and tech- 
nical schools, such as those above referred to, also give evening trade 
or technical courses or both. These courses are in part improvement 
courses, in that they are largely attended by those already engaged 
in the trades, and desiring either to supplement their practical shop 
experience with some scientific knowledge of the technic of their 
industry or to add a general shop training to the narrower training 
on a single machine, or in a single department, that has been theirs. 
Evening schools are subject to the serious limitations that the 
students are tired from the day's work, and that any thorough 
course must occupy a long period, as several years, and few persevere 
through a long course. 4 Prof. Sadler, who is thoroughly conversant 
with the numerous evening schools of England, says that about half 
of the students attend only about half of the time. Notwithstanding, 
evening schools are in great demand; and for short trade and tech- 
nical courses, chiefly to supplement some knowledge already obtained 
of a trade, they have a great and largely unoccupied field of usefulness 
before them. Prof. Richards, director of Cooper Union, states that 
"in Europe evening schools are the main instrument of industrial 
education." 

Deserving special mention among evening schools are the classes 
in the many branches of the Young Men's Christian Association. 
According to the Department of Commerce and Labor, there were 

i Nat. Educ. Assoc. Com. Rep., pp. 65-68. 

2 Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 11, pp. 8-22. 

» Ibid., pp. 81-111; 25th An. Rep., pp. 211-245. 

* John L. Shearer, president of the Ohio Mechanics Institute at Cincinnati, voices thus strongly a general 
view of those who know the facts: " For moral reasons I can not sanction the establishment of departments 
in our public schools which make it optional for a child to attend either in the daytime or in the evening. 
The temptation becomes too great to utilize the child's ability for commercial purposes, and the conse- 
quences of this irregular training become a serious burden upon the public in later years. I have not found 
that evening classes for children are productive of good results, but rather leave in their train many serious 
evils. This brings me then to what I consider the legitimate sphere of the night school. It should be a 
good school for adults and not for children."— Rep. Wisconsin Commis. on Indus, and Agric. Training, 
1, p. 48. 



INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 37 

in 1902, 6,000 men and boys enrolled in their classes; while in 1910 
there were 50,000 employed men and boys receiving instruction 
under 2,250 paid teachers, two nights a week for half the year, in 140 
different commercial and vocational subjects. 1 The students bear 
in membership and tuition fees, a part of the cost of instruction. 
The technical courses are such as mechanical, architectural, and 
freehand drawing, physics, chemistry, electricity, plan reading and 
estimating, concrete and steel engineering; while the trades taught 
include among others carpentry, pattern work, forging, and tool 
making, machine shop practice, and plumbing. 

Closely akin to the evening schools, and to be classed with them as 
performing the same function so far as the technical aspect is con- 
cerned, are the correspondence school courses which have attained 
such wide publicity in recent years. 2 

One of the chief of these states that its purpose is to teach the 
theory of engineering and of trades to those actually at work in those 
activities, and the other schools perform a similar function. They 
are thus distinctly technical schools. They are usually private, profit- 
making enterprises. In two leading correspondence schools the tui- 
tion fees vary from $20 for the shorter to $120 for the longer courses. 
So great has been the demand for their services, not only in places where 
there were no other technical schools, but where these were available, 
that one of them had enrolled 300,000 students, in 1902, and had en- 
rolled up to 1910 a total of over 1,300,000. The method of these 
schools, though ridiculed at first, has proven to be quite effective. 
Much of its success has been due to the division of all subjects into 
short lessons, stated in simple, explicit language, and illustrated 
whenever necessary, forming each a unit by itself, and containing 
what is necessary to understand the next lesson, and no more. Com- 
petent instructors correct all written and drawn work, and give 
special attention to those who need it. Where the number of stu- 
dents permits it, traveling instructors now meet the students in a 
locality for an hour every week or every two weeks. To complete 
the longer courses usually requires five or six years, but graduation 
is not so urgent as in most schools, because the student is, as a rule, 
working at his trade while studying. The Union Pacific educational 
bureau for information has since 1909 supplied expert tuition without 
cost to its employees by mail. Trade-unions approve of this type 
of school, as they do of all schools designed to increase the efficiency 
of those already in trades, as distinguished from those which increase 
or which they think increase the number entering the trades. 

Industrial schools for girls are not numerous, and are mostly 
private philanthropic institutions. Their work usually includes 

1 Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 11, p. 101. 

2 17th An. Rep. Com. Labor, pp. 223-234; 25th An. Rep. Com. Labor, pp. 349-360. 



38 



GERMAN" INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 



domestic science, whose purpose is oftener to prepare for housekeeping 
than for wage earning. The distinctly trade courses are almost 
entirely limited to dressmaking and millinery 1 showing often a 
lack of study of vocational opportunities open to girls and women. 

Having now completed our brief survey of existing schools, let us 
glance for a moment at the tendencies of recent State legislation 
with regard to industrial education of various sorts. 2 Massachusetts, 
New York, and Connecticut have enacted laws providing State aid 
to free public industrial or trade schools; New Jersey has legislated 
for State aid for free privately established schools; and Wisconsin 
allows cities to establish trade and industrial schools at their own 
expense. These States are in the lead in respect to industrial 
education legislation, but a variety of other legislation in other States 
has been passed in very recent years. Thus, according to Bulletin 
No. 12 of the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Educa- 
tion, the following State legislation is now in effect, covering the field of 
free public secondary industrial education of a practical type, as 
distinguished from a cultural: 3 

States legislating on and giving aid to industrial education. 



Number 


States 


of 


giving 


States. 


aid. 


19 


6 


29 


16 


10 


1 


18 


9 


11 


11 


19 


13 


11 


8 


3 


2 



States not legislating with respect to some type or types of practical activities 

States legislating with respect to practical activities 

States providing for technical high schools 

Providing for manual training 

Providing for training in domestic economy 

Providing for agricultural training 

Providing for industrial and trade training 

Providing for all the practical activities 



So recent is the bulk of this legislation that it can be said: "The 
first State subsidy for agricultural or trade training of secondary 
grade of any significance was not granted until after the close of the 
last century." * Some of this legislation is in advance of its utiliza- 
tion by the localities. The authors of the bulletin above referred to 
declare : 

The further development of public vocational education would seem to be depend- 
ent in large measure upon legislation providing for State initiative, State subsidy 
and a reasonable degree of State control. 5 

One item of recent legislation would seem to call for note and that 
is the Ohio compulsory attendance law of 1910 for part-time schools. 
The part of the general compulsory attendance law which deals 

1 25th An. Rep., p. 263. 

2 Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 12, Legislation upon Indus. E due. in U.S.; texts of the 
recent laws are found in 25th An. Rep., pp. 499-518. 
» Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 12, pp. 24fl. 
* Ibid., p. 26. 
» Ibid., p. 27. 



INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 39 

with this feature declares that, in school districts where part-time 
classes are provided for the instruction of youths over 14 who are 
engaged in regular employment, a new obligation to attend such 
schools for not over eight hours a week in the daytime (between 8 
a. m. and 5 p. m.) during school term is imposed on all youths under 
16 who have not satisfactorily completed the eighth grade of the 
elementary schools, until they shall have completed the eighth 
grade or have reached their seventeenth birthday. 1 The success 
of this new experiment, and the way different classes receive it, will 
be watched with much interest. 

Superior in scope even to the Ohio law is the Wisconsin compulsory 
improvement school law of 1911, according to which boys and girls 
between 14 and 16 who are working under legal permit must attend 
an improvement or other school established for the purpose, wherever 
such school exists, for five hours a week and six months in the year. 
Employers must release their youthful workers so obligated for a 
number of hours equal to the hours of compulsory school attendance. 
This law, based on German experience, is of the type recommended 
in this study. It is but an opening wedge, for the compulsion is 
dependent on the action of the locality in establishing the proper 
school, and extends only till the child is 16 years old. Notwith- 
standing these limitations, inherent in any pioneer law of this scrt, 
the act marks Wisconsin as the State which at present leads the van 
in the movement for really popular industrial education. 2 

iNat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, Bull. No. 12, p. 35. 

* See Appendix B. The Wisconsin Apprentice Law of 1911. The text of the compulsory improvement 
school law is reproduced at the close of this appendix. The apprentice law and the school law should be 
studied In conjunction with each other. 



CHAPTER IV. 

RESULTS AND OMISSIONS OF OUR INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

What are the net results of our present industrial education agen- 
cies to date ? In number of students raised in proficiency the results 
are small for a country so large as ours. In quality of work some 
institutions have done very well. The following are concrete results 
in terms of positions and wages: The income received during five 
years by apprentices of the North End Union School of Printing, 
above referred to, is $2,800. Subtracting the $100 for tuition the 
first year, the net amount is $420 greater than that earned during 
the same period by a boy taking a regular shop apprenticeship with 
no trade schooling. 1 The graduates of the Baron de Hirsch Trade 
School of New York City, with short trade courses of about five and 
one-half months, increase their earning capacity by the course from 
an average of $5.39 to an average of $7.54 a week, and usually reach 
journeyman grade in two or three years. 2 The Manhattan Trade 
School for Girls, with courses of about one year, sends out girls who 
earn from $3 to $8 a week at once and $4 to $12 a week after two to 
four years in their trades, with a few operators reaching $25. 3 The 
graduates of the Philadelphia Trades School, with a three years' 
course, begin work at an average wage of $9.50 a week.* Of the 
Williamson Free School for Mechanical Trades, all the graduates to 
date, 726 in number, are in the trades which 95 per cent of the grad- 
uates enter at once at 60 to 100 per cent of full journeyman's pay. 6 
About half of the graduates of the Wilmerding School for Industrial 
Arts for Boys, in San Francisco, have been accepted on the comple- 
tion of their four years' course as full journeymen, while others have 
received two to three years' credit toward the completion of an 
apprenticeship .• 

Concerning technical schools, the earnings of older graduates of the 
Hebrew Technical Institute of New York City are $60 a week, 7 while 
the graduates of the California School of Mechanical Arts are given 
credit for two to four years of apprenticeship and advance rapidly. 8 
The Massachusetts commission's report shows that in the machine 
trades shop-trained boys rise from $4 to $12 a week by the time they 



i Wright, pp. 57-60. 




*Ibid. 


, p. 45. 


2 Nat. Soe. Promot. Indus. Educ. 


, Bull. No. 11, p. 41. 


• Ibid. 


, p. 35. 


"Ibid., p. 49. 




TIbid. 


, p. 65. 


«Ibid., p. 29. 




« Ibid., 


p. 60. 


40 









OUR INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 41 

are 25 years old, while boys trained in technical schools rise from $10 
to $30 a week. 1 

The above facts are presented here as indications, but not as proofs 
in any exact sense, of what these schools have accomplished. They 
show that such schools can accomplish and have accomplished useful 
results, and specifically that trade schools can considerably shorten 
the necessary period of apprenticeship and make for superior ability. 
From the other types of schools increased efficiency and promotion 
have come in a great number of cases. And yet the schools are so 
few, the need so great, that public initiative is urgently demanded. 
Our provision for industrial education in this country is still mainly 
private and may be summed up as good, though not ideal, means 
for training industrial leaders with almost no industrial training for 
the rank and file. 

What, in brief, can we legitimately and reasonably expect that 
industrial education will do for our workers, for our industries, and 
for the whole people ? In a few, and perhaps an increasing number of 
cases, we can expect higher skill and better products to result than 
had before existed. Such results are most likely in the broad field 
of art and design in industry. The main direct result of widely 
extended industrial education will be the wide diffusion of industrial 
intelligence, more or less general in its nature, and of specialized skill 
in a great variety of lines. That the proper types of schools can 
impart these qualities has been proved both in the United States and 
abroad. This industrial intelligence and specialized skill can hardly 
be expected, in the near future at least, to surpass in quality that 
now found in our midst; the gain will be rather in quantity. A larger 
number and proportion of our industrial population than at present 
will be skilled workers. 

But can places be found for this multitude of skilled workers ? 
Will not many of them, with the training and outlook of skilled men 
and women, be forced to labor at work below their abilities ? Are 
not the relative needs of industry for skilled and for unskilled workers, 
as well as for different grades of skilled workers, fixed ? And does 
not this limitation of the needs of industry for skilled workers doom 
a large portion of our population (substantially as at present) to 
unskilled or relatively unskilled positions throughout their lives ? 
In recent years especially the demands of industry seem to be for 
many unskilled (or but slightly or very narrowly skilled) and for a 
few only of thoroughly skilled workers. If this limitation were rigid, 
our efforts along the line of strictly industrial education should be 
limited to the training of only enough workers to fill the skilled posi- 
tions, each with a grade of skill limited to the possibilities of his posi- 

1 Rep. of Mass. Com. on Indus, and Tech. Educ, Apr., 1906, pp. 67-69. 



42 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

tion. The situation is, however, more hopeful than this. Many 
unskilled or slightly skilled workers are now demanded by industry- 
chiefly because their labor is cheap, while our manufacturers would 
gladly employ more skilled workers could they secure them. For 
the country as a whole, their numbers are at a given time fixed. 
Individual employers can secure more skilled workers only by paying 
rates of wages which often they can not afford. If, then, industrial 
education becomes general in the United States, the increase in the 
number and proportion of skilled workers available will force a read- 
justment of industries by the mere fact that such a readjustment 
will become profitable to employers. They will find it worth their 
while to contract the number of unskilled workers whom they employ 
and to increase the number of skilled workers. To the individual 
employer the motive for this change will be pecuniary ; he will have 
to pay relatively more than before for unskilled labor, less than 
before for skilled. Further, there are some who hold that, aside from 
the cost of labor, the modern industrial army of few captains and 
many privates will undergo a transformation and that many skilled 
workers of various grades — the noncommissioned officers of the army — 
will come to be demanded. Such an increase in skill required of 
many of its workers has accompanied the modern tendency toward 
intensive cultivation in agriculture. It may yet open broad oppor- 
tunities for the average man in industry. 

With the probability then of increased opportunity for skilled 
workers, what advantage will those workers derive who now have 
to enter unskilled work, but who, with large opportunities for indus- 
trial training, can become skilled workers? We may confidently 
expect that increased opportunities for industrial education of the 
right kinds will raise the real wage of vast numbers of our people and 
greatly increase the sum of well-being in the country. All classes 
will benefit, directly or indirectly, by these educational opportunities. 
It is a corollary of modern economics that it is well for a man or for 
a group to have prosperous neighbors rather than poor. Employers 
will benefit by a larger supply of skilled labor, thus increasing their 
ability to compete with foreign producers both at home and abroad, 
and enlarging their home market as a result of cheaper products. 

Chief among the defects of our present industrial schools are their 
defects of omission. A large and important field is all but unoccu- 
pied by them. In 1905 a report was made by the Commission on 
Industrial and Technical Education of Massachusetts which revealed 
a striking condition of the working children of the State, both boys 
and girls, which is probably largely true also of other highly indus- 
trialized States. 1 About five-sixths of the children, it is found, leave 
school during the seventh and eighth grades to take up industrial 

i Rep. Mass. Commiss. on Indus, and Tech. Educ, 1906, pp. 85-93. 



OUR INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 



43 



pursuits. 1 These children, about 25,000 in number, of the ages of 
14 and 15, go for the most part into industries of the lower grade, 
which, indeed, are almost the only ones open to them. To quote 
from the report, " 33 per cent of the children of this State who begin 
work between 14 and 16 are employed in unskilled industries, and 
65 per cent in low-grade industries, thus a little less than 2 per cent 
are in high-grade industries." The low-grade skilled industries in 
which child labor is much used are less desirable also than those 
where it is not. The class of family seems to have little to do with 
the trade or industry into which the child enters, nor is the industry 
much affected by family connections, except in the cases of a few 
desirable apprenticeships. "All grades of families are represented 
by their children in all grades of industries." 

The employers in practically all real trades that offer a future do 
not want the boy or girl until he or she is 16 years old at least, and 
in many cases not until he is 18. This evidence is confirmed by the 
New York report above referred to, as well as by other sources. 
Trade unions, in most cases, do not impose a higher age limit for ap- 
prentices than is acceptable to employers; in fact, the union minimum 
is usually below what the employer will accept for those industries 
where a bona fide apprenticeship holds. In most of the industries 
into which Massachusetts children of 14 and 15 go, however, there 
is no apprenticeship system, but merely child labor. Not only is it 
very hard for a child below 16 to obtain employment in one of the 
better industries, but the beginning wage in these industries is so 
low that few children will accept it, even when they may. The low- 
grade industries pay more at first, but reach their maximum in three 
or four years as a rule, and thereafter offer no chance for advancement 
for any not specially trained. This maximum averages from $7 to $8 



1 The high proportion of pupils leaving school for all causes is best stated by the following figures from 
cities throughout the country contained in U. S Bu. of Educ. Bull., 1911, No. 5: Age and Grade Census 
of Schools and Colleges, by George D. Strayer, from which the following figures are quoted (pp. 135-136): 
Median per cent of the largest age group (assumed to equal the number of pupils entering all grades each 
year) found in each grade (data obtained December, 1908, from 317 cities): 



Grades of pupils. 



Cities of over 
25,000. 



Boys. 



Girls. 



Cities of less than 
25,000. 



Boys. 



Seventh year 

Eighth year 

Ninth year 

First year high school. . . 
Fourth year high school. 



(55) 65 

(42) 50 

47 

35 

10 



Studies by graduate students in Teachers College, Columbia University, as quoted in the above report, 
show that a fair estimate of the number of repeaters would be 10 per cent of the total number in the seventh, 
and 8 per cent in the eighth grade. The figures above in parentheses represent for two cases the estimated 
actual number of pupils entering the given grades. On the whole, these figures confirm those of the Mas- 
sachusetts report, though indicating that the country as a whole keeps its children longer in its schools 
than the Massachusetts cities studied. 



44 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

a week, with $9 to $10 as the upper limit. The training offered the 
child in these low-grade industries, in which seven-eighths of the chil- 
dren below 16 work, is negligible, and from the standpoint of their 
development the years can be called, as they are called in the report, 
"wasted years." The net weekly contribution of the child to the 
family through this work, above car fare, clothes, etc., is estimated 
to average but little over $1.50. The boy or girl who does not start 
work till 16, though commencing at a lower wage, is able to reach 
the wage of his fellow of the same age who started at 14 in two years 
and has probably earned a total to equal that of him who had the 
start in four years. The younger children change frequently from 
mill to mill, and once having left the public school are not to be 
tempted back by any attractions now offered there, but rather drift 
around aimlessly. 

The gain thus of this early work is negligible in training and but 
very slight in money. Yet the families, in most cases, are not so 
poor that necessity drives them to set their children to work at the 
earliest opportunity. The experts of the commission estimate that 
76 per cent of the 3,157 families investigated would be able to give 
their children the advantages of industrial education if persuaded 
of its advantage. Industry has shown that it does not greatly 
desire the children so young, as indicated by the meager wage and 
opportunities it offers. The children are not mature enough to 
undertake any responsible work; these are the years best suited for 
the training of the child, and education at this time along lines that 
relate closely to the child's future will richly pay for itself in the future 
both in money and in efficiency. The testimony of the investigation 
from the evidence of case after case is that, except among the poorer 
foreign families, the child insisted on leaving the school, the parents 
objected, but the child had its way. What then draws the child, 
with so uniform and powerful a force, from school to mill? It is 
his awakened activity, tired of the conventionality, the unreality of 
the schoolroom; eager to see more of the world, to live in the active 
life of the world, to stand on his own feet and earn money by his own 
activity; to live less in terms of words and books, and more in 
terms of things and men. 

Where does the responsibility for this condition lie and where the 
remedy? In the schools. The schools fail to hold the child even 
when his work is worth little to himself or others, because they have 
even less to offer that in any way attracts him. Of 35 or 40 school 
superintendents interviewed throughout the State, all but three 
thought that the fault was in the school system. Would industrial 
schools succeed any better? All experience so far indicates that 
they would, if there was enough of the practical and vocational about 



OUR INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 45 

them to arouse the child's interest, and a promise of a better oppor- 
tunity in the world of industry to stimulate his imagination and dili- 
gence. The results of the Massachusetts report have opened the 
eyes of many to the likelihood that the child is likewise limited in 
other States also. 1 The need for industrial schools to redeem these 
"wasted years" and make them fruitful is imperative. Industry is 
conspiring with educational forces to make the present position less 
and less tenable, for some of the industries now employing children — 
notably the woolen industry (classed as low-grade skilled) — are dis- 
pensing more and more with their services. The result is that young 
children are being forced more and more into juvenile employments 
and into the lower-grade industries, "blind-alley" employments 
which offer no future. Before 14 the child's productive capacity is 
negligible, and between 14 and 16 it is capable of only the simplest 
processes. The need indicated is for preparatory trade or vocational 
schools, which shall teach children between the ages of 14 and 16 the 
elements of practical handling of tools and industrial materials, and 
of the principles underlying industries, each student specializing in a 
certain type or group, as metal working, wood working, etc. This 
type of school is what is called the general industrial, preparatory, 
trade, or vocational, and is the type so strongly approved of by both 
employers and unions in New York State. 

Another important investigation has recently been made under the 
direction of the United States Commissioner of Labor, entitled 
"Conditions under Which Children Leave School to Go to Work." 2 
A survey of the main conclusions of this report will support the data 
and conclusions of the Massachusetts report and show further need 
of industrial education, as well as for vocational guidance, for the 
boys and girls affected. 

An intensive study was made of 622 children (below 16 years old) 
who had left school and gone to work in seven different typical 
smaller cities in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and 
Georgia. More of the children left school at 14 years of age than at 
any other age (281 out of 620), the next largest number at 13 years 
(151), then came 15 years (81), 12 years (53), and lesser ages. 3 The 
following table summarizes the causes for leaving school by the 
children.* Generally, several causes cooperated to this result. In 
such case the predominant cause only was given. 

1 " The report of the Wisconsin Bureau of Labor for 1910 shows that only 12 per cent of the children are 
in positions to leam a trade. These, our report says, are in the building trades, millinery, dressmaking, 
trunkmaking, and tinning." In some of these, probably, "only a slight division of a trade can be 
learned." — Rept. of Wisconsin Commiss. on Indus, and Agric. Training, 1911, p. 40. 

2 Vol. VII, 1910 (61st Cong., 2d sess., S. Doc. No. 645), of Report on Conditions of Woman and Child 
Wage Earners in the United States, in 19 volumes. 

3 Ibid., p. 35. 

4 Ibid., p. 46. 



46 



GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

Causes for children leaving school to go to ivorlc. 



Causes for leaving school. 



Number 

of 
children. 



Per cent. 



Necessity: 

Earnings necessary to family support 

Help needed at home 

Self-support necessary 

Total 

Child's help desired, though not necessary: 

In family support 

To huy property 

In home work 

To earn money for education of self or relative 

Total 

Child's dissatisfaction with school: 

Tired of school 

Disliked school (general manner of life there) . 

Disliked teacher 

Disliked to study 

Could not learn 

Not promoted 

Too big for class 

Total 

Child's preference for work: 

Work preferred to school 

Spending money wanted 

Association desired with friends who worked. 

Total 

Other causes: 

111 health 

To learn a trade or business 

Company pressure (exerted on parents) 

Other (specified in detail in original table) . . . 

Total 

Grand total 



169 
6 
11 



186 

140 
12 
14 

7 



30.0 



27.9 



165 
44 



620 



26.6 



9.8 



5.7 
100.0 



In cases classed under necessity the existence or absence of neces- 
sity was decided by the investigators on the basis of statements made 
by the family concerned, as to their finances. Usually it was con- 
sidered that families having a per capita weekly income, after rent 
was paid and expenses for sickness and death met, of less than $1.50 
a week without the earnings of children under 16, could not unassisted 
keep their children in school; but that families with a per capita 
income of $2 or more, after similar deductions, were able to do so.- 
Those with per capita incomes of $1.50 to $2 as above were on the 
doubtful line, where the degree of thrift decided whether the child's 
earnings were necessary or not. 1 For all the cases where necessity 
was the chief reason for leaving school for work, trade or other indus- 
trial schools requiring attendance through the day are inapplicable. 
For these, as for other children at work, improvement schools of the 
type so widely found in Germany and recently initiated in Cincinnati 
and Boston might be adopted. 

Those families desiring the help of the child, though that help was 
not strictly necessary, generally regarded work as a child's normal 
and natural occupation, and were indifferent to school attendance 

« Vol. VII, 1910 (61st Cong., 2d sess., S. Doc. No. 645), of Report on Conditions of Woman and Child 
Wage Earners in the United States in 19 volumes, pp. 29, 30. 



OUR INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 47 

(sometimes hostile). 1 The chief need shown here was for more 
popular awakening to the importance and benefits of education. 

Those cases classed under dissatisfaction with school and preference 
for work show that the schools, as they are, do not interest a large 
class of children as much as does industrial work. 2 Of those stated as 
preferring work- 
in most cases it was a real liking for work, rather than for its attendant circumstances, 
which accounted for their leaving school. For the most part these children did not 
dislike school; in fact many of them distinctly liked it, only they liked work better. 3 

Of all the children, 51.1 per cent were satisfied with school and 
teacher, 48.9 per cent not so. 4 Even 39.5 per cent of the pupils clas- 
sified as bright by their teachers were dissatisfied. 5 That the schools 
do not provide opportunity to bring out by any means the full 
capacities of the children is shown by the higher average estimates 
of their general capacity by their employers than by their teachers. 
Thus in a classification of all as bright, average, or dull, the teachers 
classify but 26.1 per cent as bright, the employers 49.4 per cent; while 
the teachers class 26.1 per cent as dull, the employers but 7.8 per 
cent. 6 

Would manual or preparatory industrial training in the common 
schools (the only ones treated in the report) tend to increase the 
interest of the pupils in their work and hold them longer in school ? 
Answers to this question had to be secured generally from parents 
and were thus their opinion as to their children's views. They thought 
in 24.5 per cent of the cases that such training would have increased 
the desire of their children to stay in school. Columbus, Ga., one of 
the seven cities investigated, has excellent manual training work and 
two special industrial schools. There was in Columbus less dissatis- 
faction by the children in the schools than elsewhere, which would 
seem to be due to these industrial features did not Columbia, S. C, 
with no manual or industrial training, have almost as good a record. 7 

Most of the children studied entered unskilled industries, while but 
few entered trades. But little real choice was exercised by most 
(88.7 per cent), as follows: 8 

Worked for parents or relatives or at home 29 

Took first place offered 313 

Went where friends or relatives worked 192 

Took something near home 16 

Total (88.7 per cent) 550 

1 Vol. VII, 1910 (61st Cong., 2d sess., S. Doc. No. 645), of Report on Conditions of Woman and Child 
Wage Earners in the United States, in 19 volumes, pp. 50-52. 
a Ibid., pp. 52-55. 
» Ibid., p. 55. 

* Ibid., p. 110. 
*Ibid., p. 120. 
•Ibid., pp. 122, 123. 
'Ibid., pp. 108, 110-112. 

• Ibid., p. 183. 



48 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

For the remainder, the reasons were as follows: 

Wanted to learn trade or skilled occupation 27 

Attracted by high wages 11 

Attracted by desirable work 31 

Set up in grocery business by father 1 

Total (11.3 per cent) 70 

"Practically 90 per cent of the boys and all of the girls entered 
industries whose average weekly wage for all employees is under 
$10. m Though most who entered trades did so by aid of friends or 
relatives in the trade, there are indications that such aid was chiefly 
of value in opening the children's eyes to the trade opportunity. 
Without such special information, nothing awakens the child to the 
desirability of an occupation promising a future; so he drifts into the 
first position handy. 2 This suggests a service which manual training 
or elementary prevocational training in common schools, as well as 
intermediate industrial schools, can render — the awakening of the 
child to an industrial intelligence which shall, among other results, 
aid him to select intelligently and enter a vocation which premises 
a futare, if that be possible with his family's means. 

Purposeful planning or definite ambition existed in the minds of 
' ' barely half of the boys and less than half of the girls." 3 Often where 
such ambition existed the work being done at the time bore no manner 
of relation to this ambition and furthered it not one whit. 4 A much 
larger percentage of those who had completed half or more of the 
school course had definite ambitions for their work than of those who 
had not gone so far. Since the correlation between age and grade is 
low, this seems to show "that the schools have had considerable 
effect in giving the pupils a definite aim in life." 5 Finally, 167 
boys (47.3 per cent) and 108 girls (40.2 per cent) said that if an 
evening trade school were opened they would wish to go. 9 Can not 
these cities, and others, afford to give the children the opportunity 
they need and wish ? 

i Vol. VII, 1910 (61st Cong., 2d sess., S. Doc. No. 645), of Report on Conditions of Woman and Child 
Wage Earners in the United States, in 19 volumes, pp. 151, 152. 
2 Ibid., pp. 186, 187. 
s Ibid., p. 190. 
♦ Ibid., p. 189. 
6 Ibid., pp. 190, 19L 
6 Ibid., p. 192. 



PART II. GERMANY. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE BACKGROUND OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOIS. 

To understand aright the very successful experiments of Germany 
in the field of industrial education, some consideration of the nation's 
industrial background is necessary. 1 Germany has developed very 
slowly, both in political integration and in industrial improvement. 
In fact, surprising as it may seem, the greater part of Germany's 
industrial advances have been made since her final integration into 
a nation in 1871. While England was leading the world in indus- 
trial and commercial advances Germany was lying dormant, unfav- 
ored in position, with a naturally poor soil, surrounded by enemies, 
and with a very conservative population, chiefly agricultural. Long 
after England had passed through the first and most violent stages 
of the industrial revolution, and the other countries of western 
Europe were in the midst of the great changes, Germany awoke 
from her lethargy and slowly began, under the stern force of neces- 
sity, to develop her industries and to give less relative attention 
to agriculture and more to manufacturing, transportation, and 
commerce. In one respect the country's slowness of development 
was an advantage, for the terrible waste of human life and health 
which accompanied the industrial revolution in England was almost 
unknown in Germany. Very slowly did Germany, borrowing the 
tools and ideas of her rivals, or learning them by stealth, develop 
modern factory industries. Yet the lack of national unity was a 
great drawback. Not until the tariff union (Zollverein) was formed 
in 1835 were the first barriers broken down, while the German nation 
was not able to stand forth as a unity till the fateful days of 1871. 
Since then German industries, fostered by a strong and paternalistic 
Government, aided by the best that science can bring and by a 
fine system of industrial education, conducted by a people hardy, 
diligent, faithful, subservient to discipline, and inspired by public 
spirit, have grown in size and strength until Germany is to-day one 
of the leading manufacturing and export nations of the world. 

i See Howard: Cause and Extent of the Recent Industrial Progress in Germany; and Spec. Consular 
Reps., vol. 33, Indus. Educ. and Indus. Conditions in Germany, 1905. 

88740°— 13 4 49 



50 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

In giving credit to the various factors which are jointly respon- 
sible for Germany's industrial successes, the qualities of her eminently 
industrial people and the stern necessities of her situation should 
have first place. Germany had few of the natural advantages in 
which the United States is so rich; her population was among the 
densest in Europe, and constantly increasing, with no outlet in 
colonies, and whatever markets she won must be won from rivals 
first in the field, and, at the start, better equipped than she. It 
became increasingly apparent as the nineteenth century grew older 
that Germany's farms could not long support her population. She 
must import foodstuffs, and to this end must become a manufac- 
turing nation. The present Kaiser sounded the watchword for the 
country when he declared: "The future of the German nation lies 
on the seas." The German people realized this, and have stead- 
fastly kept their faces turned toward their foreign markets, and to 
the many factories where all manner of goods are made, to be con- 
sumed from Bremen to Peking. 

Other factors in Germany's industrial and commercial success are 
those which flow from the persistence and thoroughness, typical of 
the race. The Germans have realized that theirs was not a situa- 
tion to be dealt with by careless methods, and that the closest mental 
application was necessary to solve the hard problems before the 
country. Fichte was largely instrumental in starting the nation, 
after the defeats by France at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, in the paths of careful and scientific investigation and 
education. The nation followed his methods and has progressed 
by taking thought. Joined to this general thoroughness is a degree 
of cooperation for the common interests, through the centralized 
Government and otherwise, from which much better results can be 
expected and have actually been obtained than is possible with less 
centralization. This is evident, for example, in the influence of 
Government and of guilds on the industrial schools. Finally, the 
German nation follows the lead of science in her industries and 
relates science to industry in a marked degree. 

Along with Germany's very rapid progress in the past few decades 
there are aspects of her development not nearly as progressive. Her 
agriculture, on the whole, is backward, while the whole country 
suffers from overpopulation and the low plane of living accompanying 
it. The position of the average worker is a humble one, with little 
opportunity to rise. The idea of " Stand," that is, business, or more 
broadly, social position, is a fundamental one in the German thinking. 1 
A man has a place in life of which birth is the chief determinant. He 
is expected to, and he usually does, both conform fairly closely to the 
type for that Stand and fail to change to another Stand. The medi- 

1 Howard, pp. 94 fl. 



BACKGROUND OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 51 

eval idea of labor and enterprise not for profits but for livelihood 
(according to the requirements of the individual's Stand), still per- 
sists and conspires with the difficulty, or nigh impossibility for the 
great majority, of obtaining a surplus revenue over present needs, to 
preserve the status quo. On the other hand, the various industrial 
insurance funds, a better administered poor relief, industrial educa- 
tion, an industrial law well executed, which protects the worker in 
many ways, combine to make the maintenance of a worker's Stand 
and plane of living surer than in our country. One of the antece- 
dents of the German system of education, especially industrial educa- 
tion, which must be kept in mind, is that a man's Stand, once chosen 
and fairly started on, can not be as easily changed as in the United 
States, if at all. If one fails at his chosen business, he fails in life, as 
there is much less opportunity than with us to change his vocation. 
This idea both fosters and is fostered by the practice of educating for 
a special business, whether it be cobbler or diplomat, which is more 
universally observed than is usual in the United States. 

Compulsory military service is a factor in German industries of no 
mean importance. Requiring of all men, with but few exceptions, two 
years of service (three if in the cavalry) after reaching the age of 20 
years, it affects practically the entire male population. 1 However 
much of evil this service may involve, in tax burdens and in taking 
two of the best years of each man's life, German opinion holds strongly 
to the view that it benefits the country's industries. It is claimed 
that it strengthens the physique, accustoms to cleanliness, order, and 
discipline, and makes for self respect. 2 It has other results which 
are to the American mind not so desirable. It tends to overempha- 
size subordination and to subdue excessively the initiative and per- 
sonality of the worker. 

The industries 3 of the country are classified under two main heads — 
factories (or large industries) and handwork (or little industries). 
A common national industrial law 4 (Reichs Gewerbe-Ordnung, or 
Gewerbe-Ordnung) governs all industries, while under its terms and 
within the limits it sets lesser laws and regulations apply to any par- 
ticular industry. Much of this national industrial law applies to all 
industry, while the conflict of years between the two types of industry 
has resulted in special provisions of the law for each. This industrial 
law gives no definition of factory nor of handwork, and an official of 
the Prussian ministry for commerce and industry 5 told me that the 

i University students are free from the requirement; those who pass successfully six years work in 
Gynasium, Realschule, or equivalent school, receive the coveted certificate commuting the service to one 
year (as a so-called "volunteer," with special privileges); there are other lesser exceptions. 

2 U. S. Spec. Consular Reps., vol. 33, Indus. Educ. and Indus. Conditions in Germany, pp. 271, 272. 

8 Industries proper, not including agriculture. 

* Reichs Gewerbe-Ordnung (R. G. O.), as in edition edited and annotated by Dr. Hoffman, pub. by Carl 
Heymann's Verlag, Berlin, 1911. 

• Konigliche Preussischen Ministerium fur Handel und Gewerbe. 



52 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

ministry is as yet unsuccessfully seeking to define certain industries as 
factory industries and certain as handwork. The difficulty arises from 
the fact that the two types shade into each other by insensible grada- 
tions ; in fact a given industry is carried on by some after the factory 
type and by others after the manner of handwork. 

The national industrial law states the following criteria according 
to which administrative and judicial authorities may decide whether 
a given business be factory or handwork: "(1) The size and extent 
of the space used; (2) the extent and value of the annual production;^ 
(3) the kind of division of labor and the more mechanical or the more 
craf tsmanlike cooperation of the workers ; (4) the more or less exten- 
sive use of machines; (5) production on the basis of special orders 
and retail sale, or for a stock of goods or large-scale production 
(or partial production) ; (6) the character of the industry as a by- 
industry of the machine or large industries, especially the prep- 
aration of specialties; (7) the personal sharing of the business 
head in the production of the commodity, or the limitation of his 
activity to the commercial superintendence; (8) the training of 
apprentices according to the manner of handwork, and the employ- 
ment of youthful workers " (who are not apprentices, which is typical 
of factories). 1 

This division into handwork and factory industries is profoundly 
important in all industrial questions in Germany. The country has 
been and remains slow in substituting modern factory types of industry 
for the older and more simply organized handwork. Not that facto- 
ries as large as any do not exist in Germany, but the proportion of 
workers busied in them is probably less than in the United States; 
how much less is very hard to tell. Census figures for 1907 show the- 
following proportions of all industrial workers in establishments of 
different sizes : 2 

Per cent. 

Persons working alone 10. 1 

Persons in establishments employing 2 to 5 persons 19. 4 

Employing 6 to 10 persons 6. 6 

Employing 11 to 50 persons 18. 4 

Employing 51 to 200 persons 20. 1 

Employing "201 to 1,000 persons 17.3 

Employing over 1,000 persons 8. 1 

The lesser importance of factories in Germany has made some of 
the industrial problems easier to solve than they are in the United 
States. This is notably true of apprenticeship and industrial educa- 
tion, whose hardest problems on both sides of the water are con- 
nected with factories. 

i R. G. O. (imperial industrial law), p. 297. 

«Bucher, Karl. The " Law of Mass Production," in Zeitscnrift fur die gesammte Staatswissenschaft, 
1910, 3 Heft, p. 430. 



BACKGROUND OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 53 

In certain trades and among certain people in Germany handwork 
is sure of a permanent place. The building trades, for example, will 
probably always require the general type of industry and organization 
which now obtains in handwork. All trades, or cases of practice of 
trades, where individual orders are the rule or small local shops are 
needed or artistic design is the chief consideration, will continue to be 
carried on after the craftsmanlike manner of handwork. Another 
stronghold of handwork is the farming population in some districts, 
who, when farm duties do not press, supplement their scanty incomes 
by manufacturing a great variety of tasteful and useful articles. The 
German people as a whole realize the advantages of the handwork 
type of industry, and with traditional conservatism have opposed the 
rising prominence of factories and are striving to keep all industries 
possible in the fold of handwork. In this effort they not only show 
that "in Germany, as in no other country the people have been 
unwilling to break with their past," but they are also conserving that 
type of industry in which the personal and more human factors have 
a fair chance to control the situation to the welfare of all concerned, 
and limiting the application of that type in which the technical 
factors tend to ride rough-shod over the personal, often to the benefit 
only of the consumer. 

The laws and institutions by which the Germans have attempted 
to solve the hard problems of apprenticeship and industrial educa- 
tion center ehiefly about handwork, for the problem in the factories is 
to-day far from solved. In the same sphere of industry our greatest 
problems of industrial education he. Germany can help us by her 
example in our efforts to solve these problems. But her greatest 
triumphs have been in the sphere of handwork, and we must modify 
the lessons she teaches to suit the greater importance of factor\ T indus- 
tries with us. 

The degree of specialization attained in German industries is of the 
utmost importance in her attempted solutions of the problem of 
industrial education. How much specialization exists is, however, 
extremely difficult to discover and would require for a complete 
answer an extensive investigation. I can offer a limited amount of 
data on the subject. 

By specialization, for the present purposes, we may understand the 
practice by each worker of only a more or less narrow subdivision of 
a trade. This definition suggests the question, What constitutes a 
trade — a wide or a narrow range of operations ? No precise answer 
can be given, or rather, the type of answer varies from trade to trade. 
German trades, like those of the United States, show a gradual tend- 
ency to split up, while new and formerly unheard-of trades con- 
stantly develop. But in Germany, in some cases, the original trades 



54 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

were (and are) more comprehensive than those in the United States, 
and so the splitting up of these more comprehensive groups of opera- 
tions results in less of specialization than in the United States. For 
example, the complete trade of the German Klempner (plumber) in- 
cludes plumbing, gas, water, and steam fitting, sheet-metal work, 
miscellaneous repairing, and generally also electrical fitting. 

Another feature of German specialization, found probably less often 
in the United States, is the training of workers in handwork, where 
they learn their whole trade, and then later specialize in factories. 
Thus a plumber will learn the whole of his trade in an old-style shop, 
or a branch of it only in newer more specialized ones. This training 
will generally include electro- technics. He can then enter as a jour- 
neyman a factory manufacturing electrical goods and learn and prac- 
tice a specialized branch of his trade, as armature winding. The 
handwork masters say that by this process the factories with- 
draw the best journeymen from handwork. 1 The Reichstag, in an 
inquiry into the conditions in handwork instituted in 1895, stated 
that in their opinion the number of handwork journeymen who had 
entered factories far exceeded the number remaining in handwork. 2 
This type of specialization has a manifest advantage over that prac- 
ticed in many or most factories in this country, in that it is subse- 
quent to and rests on a general practice and acquaintance with the 
whole trade or a large branch of it. 

The extent of specialization varies greatly from locality -to locality, 
often even though these may be adjacent. In general, we may say 
that, as in the corresponding industries in the United States, speciali- 
zation has gone far in factories, but not nearly so far in handwork. 
Many handwork shops, however, carry on but a part of the whole 
trade. For example, some cabinetmakers practice all branches of their 
trade, some make only interior house "trim," some only furniture, and 
some only certain sorts of furniture. But businesses which make, for 
example, only chairs, or only chairs of a certain type, are usually 
among those classed as factories. Informants stated that there was 
little specialization in their locality in Mannheim, Coblenz, and Co- 
logne; that there was little specialization in handwork in Chemnitz, 
Elberfeld, Dortmund, Essen, and Aachen; and that there was much 
specialization in Berlin, Munich, Frankfort on the Main, Barmen, Duis- 
burg, and Dusseldorf (in most of these cities both in factories and 
handwork). To be cautious, a large allowance should be made in 
dealing with this data, for the personal outlook of the informants, 
probably often biased by one-sided special knowledge. Of one 
thing we may be sure: The problem of industrial education, as in the 

i Dusseldorf Handwerkskammer. 

8 Stenogr. Ber. u. d. Verhdl. d. R. T. 1895-97, 8.80, quoted in Coelseh, Dr. Hans. Deutsche Lehrlings- 
politik im Handwerk, 1910, p. 122. 



BACKGROUND OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 55 

United States, is not identical for different sections of the country. 
To sum up: The fact and the problem of specialization are the same 
in the two countries, but the United States has the problem in an 
acute form, both because more of our industries are of the factory 
form and because specialization in small and less specialized shops 
(corresponding to German handwork) has gone further than in the 
older country. 

The ordinary workman, specialized or not, the private in the ranks, 
has in all the initiative and management of the business in which he 
works, and often in its welfare institutions also, 1 but little say. The 
prevailing sentiment of the middle class seems to be that he should 
be kept from much or any influence or control in industrial matters. 
Yet the workers do not so regard the matter, and many of them are 
striving with great energy for more democracy in. industry. 

The German trades-unions are less strong and unified than those 
of England and the United States. 2 The right to combine is guaran- 
teed under the law to all employers and employees, except servants, 
farm workers, and sailors. Strikes and lockouts are legitimate, but 
the means by which they are carried on are more closely regulated 
than with us, and the rights of the unions in general more restricted. 
Politics are prominent in the German unions and divides them into 
three separate camps. Of these, that of the "Free," or Social Demo- 
cratic unions, is by far the largest, numbering about 700,000 mem- 
bers. It is closely associated with the Social Democratic Party, 
pays relatively little attention to mutual aid within the union, and 
much to political activity without. The "German" or Hirsch- 
Duncker unions number about 100,000 members and are framed on 
the English-niodel, with mutual aid or benefit features prominent, and 
a less militant political attitude. The third group, of less than 100,000 
members, is that of the "Christian" unions, formed under the influ- 
ence of the Roman Catholic Church as a protest against the atheistic 
and radical social attitude of the Social Democratic unions. 

Distinct from the unions are the guilds, some of them descended 
without break from the bodies which so dominated industry during 
medieval and early modern days. 3 These hold such peculiar and 
important relations to industrial education and apprenticeship that 
they are worthy of fuller consideration, which I offer in the chapter 
following. 

• Note an exception, ch. 6, p. 58. « Bulletin No. 27, Bureau of Labor, pp. 314-328. 

* Spec. Consular Rep., vol. 33, pp. 254-263. 



CHAPTER VI. 

GUILDS AND CHAMBERS OF INDUSTRY. 

The industrial revolution, which came in Germany more as an 
evolution, broke down the power of the old-time guilds (Innungen) 
and left industry with few helmsmen save the heads of individual 
firms. The permanent interests of industry, as well as the public 
interest, suffered in consequence. Especially was the lack of the 
former guild regulation seen in the defective training given t.o 
apprentices, 1 and a multitude of other abuses sprang up, among 
which these pertaining to apprenticeship were chief. Uncontrolled 
competition was weighed and found wanting by the Germans. Reg- 
ulation there must be, and yet preferably regulation in which the 
undertakers of industry should have a share. To meet this need, 
the old-time guilds were revived, and in place of their old-time 
powers, new rights and powers were given to them. A few of the 
old-style guilds were reorganized on the new basis, but most existing 
guilds have arisen during the last few decades, under the new laws. 
These guilds are designed primarily to meet the needs of handwork, 
and have almost no bearing on factory industries. Very few fac- 
tories have any connection with guilds. 2 

Guilds are either free or compulsory. Any independent trades- 
man may establish a free gdild 3 for a trade in a definite district. 4 
The requirements for membership are: 5 

(]) That the candidate carry on independently the industry for 
which the guild is organized, and in its district; or (2) that he be a 
foreman or in a similar position in a factory engaged in the same 
industry as that of the guild; or (3) that he shall have formerly 
held one of the above positions and now practices no other trade; 
or (4) that he be a handworker engaged in agriculture or industry 
for wage. The ability of the candidate to carry on the industry 
independently may be determined by examination. No qualified 
person may be denied membership, and no exceptions to these rules 
are allowed. 

The purposes or duties of the guilds are stated by law to be the 
development of an esprit de corps and trade honor; the promotion 
of friendly relations between masters and journeymen, as well as 
care for journeymen's homes (Herberge), and information about 

i Coelsch, Dr. Hans. Deutsche LeJirlingspolitik im Handwerk, p. 50. *Ibid., sec. 83, pp. 259ff. 

2 An engineer of Fried. A. G. Krupp. ' » Ibid., sec. 87, pp. 266fl. 

•R. G. O. (imperial industrial law), sec. 81, pp. 254. 

56 



GUILDS AND CHAMBERS OF INDUSTRY. 57 

employment; the detailed regulation of apprenticeship, and the 
care for the technical, industrial, and moral training of the appren- 
tices; and the decision of disputes between guild members and their 
apprentices. 1 Besides these prescribed duties, guilds have certain 
other permitted activities. They may establish and support schools 
for industrial, technical, and social education of masters, journey- 
men, and apprentices. 2 They may hold journeymen's and master's 
examinations and certify the candidates which pass them. They 
may establish funds to aid their members and their employees in 
case of sickness, death, inability to work, and other emergencies. 
They may establish guild courts, which shall take the place of the 
regular authorities as the court of the first jurisdiction, in the settle- 
ment of disputes between members and their employees. Finally, 
they may establish a common business to promote the interests of 
the guild members. 

The statutes of the guilds must regulate within the limits allowed 
by law, and by the regulations of the Government authorities and 
chambers of industry, 3 a number of matters, including the super- 
vision of the regulations of the activities of journeymen, apprentices, 
and other workers, and those for attendance on improvement or 
trade schools, and for the regulation of apprenticeship. 4 Deciding 
on the detailed statutes fcr the regulation of apprenticeship is one of 
the (10) most important kinds of business which can not be dele- 
gated to the directorate, but must be undertaken by the guild assem- 
bly. 5 The guilds are authorized to supervise, through agents, the 
execution of the legal and guild regulations in the industry for which 
the guild is organized. Such agents of the guild as are selected must 
be allowed access to the workshops and employment rooms cf guild 
members during working hours. 8 Thess regulations do not apply to 
any workrooms which are parts of agricultural or factory industries, 7 
which indicate that the guilds are designed distinctly for handwork. 

The guilds are under the close supervision and authority of the 
subordinate Government administrative authorities. 8 All guild 
statutes, as well as any amendments to them, must be approved by 
the proper authorities. 8 The guild institutions, as schools, insurance 
funds, etc., must be administered under special regulations, to be 
approved by the legal authorities. 10 If a guild neglects to submit to 

i R. G. O., sec. 81a, pp. 254, 255. 
s Ibid., sec. 81b, pp. 256ff. 
•Ibid., sec. 81a, 3, p. 254. 
< Ibid., sec. 83, 10, p. 260. 
* Ibid., sec. 93, 5, pp. 280fl. 

•Exceptions: If a master fears harm from such inspection, he can provide at his own cost a substitute, 
who shall furnish the directorate such information as they desire. 
i R. G. O., sec. 94c, pp. 285fl. 
8 Ibid., sec. 96, p. 289. 
» Ibid., sec. 84, pp. 262ff. 
"Ibid., sec. 85, pp. 264fl. 



58 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

the proper demands of the legal authorities, these may appoint a 
representative who adjudicates guild disputes and takes initiative 
if necessary. No final decision can be reached by a guild on amend- 
ment of its statutes or by-laws, or its own dissolution, without the 
presence of a representative of the authorities. 1 

Of great interest as indicating a trend toward democracy in indus- 
try, or a revival of the voice of journeymen in the old-time guilds, 
is the journeymen's committee. All journeymen employed by a 
guild member, and in possession of citizens' rights, may vote for 
members of the committee of journeymen. 2 This committee takes 
part in the guild affairs as largely as the law and the guild statutes 
allow. It is concerned especially with the regulation of apprentice- 
ship, with the journeymen's examination and with the founding and 
administering of all institutions for which the journeymen con- 
tribute, in which they have special interest, or which are designed 
to aid them. The guild statutes, in their detailed regulations, must 
provide that (1) in the discussion and final decision of the guild 
directorate at least one member of the journeymen's committee 
shall be admitted with full voting rights; (2) in the discussion and 
final decisions of the guild assembly all the members of the committee 
shall be admitted with full voting rights; 3 and (3) in the administra- 
tion of institutions of which journeymen, according to the president 
of the guild, make use, journeymen elected from their committee 
are to participate in equal numbers with the guild members. 4 

Guilds are allowed legal status and liability limited to their prop- 
erty. 5 They may collect dues from their members, fees for institu- 
tions established by them, and fines; and these are collectible by 
force of law as any other just debt. 6 The law further regulates the 
form of organization and mode of doing business, the organization 
of guild courts, and other matters, but allows, however, within the 
prescribed forms, considerable freedom of activity to the guilds. 7 

Under these laws guilds have been established in great numbers 
throughout Germany. Their effect has been to bring about some 
degree of cooperation of competitors in industry in common regula- 
tion of what most concerns them. Their influence on apprenticeship 
is highly beneficial, tending to replace neglect by care, exploitation 
by education. Acting under their permitted powers, the guilds 
have founded numerous industrial schools. Many of these have 
been taken over since by cities or other public authorities; many 
are controlled and supported partly by the guilds which founded 
them and partly by Government, while some are to-day wholly guild 
schools. In almost all trade schools, whether founded by guilds or 



i R. G. O., sec. 96, pp. 289ff. * Ibid., sec. 86, p. 266. 

*Ibid., sec. 5a, p. 288. «Ibid., see. 88, pp. 270fl; sec. 89, pp. 271fl. 

» Without which any decisions are void. ' Ibid., sees. 81-99, pp. 254-296. 

«R. G. 0.,sec. 95,pp. 286fl. 



GUILDS AND CHAMBERS OF INDUSTRY 



59 



not, and in many other industrial schools also, the guilds of the 
trades concerned are represented on the boards of trustees, furnish 
models, require their apprentices to attend, assist in conducting 
examinations and otherwise aid the schools. 

A special type of guild may also be established under the national 
industrial law — the compulsory guilds (Zwangsinnungen). For the 
promotion of the common industrial interests of a handwork trade 
or of several such related trades, and on motion of the handworkers 
in the district, the authorities must require all those in the district 
engaged in the trade or trades concerned to join together to form a 
new compulsory guild. Several conditions, however, must first 
be fulfilled. The majority of those in the industry or trade and dis- 
trict who employ journeymen or apprentices must approve, the 
district must not be too large to permit the ready attendance of all 
members on guild gatherings, and the number of members must be 
enough to form an efficient guild. The initiative in the formation 
of a compulsory guild may come from a free guild (as all noncom- 
pulsory guilds may be called) of the industry concerned, or from 
individual handworkers. 1 An official ratifying vote of all the hand- 
workers in the trade or trades and district concerned must be secured 
by the authorities. This vote is taken by mail, and a majority of 
those voting decide the question. 2 

On the formation of a compulsory guild, the (free) guilds which 
are organized for the same industry and district must dissolve. 
Guilds which include also other branches of industry continue in 
existence, but those of their members who are required to join the 
new compulsory guild must withdraw. 3 The property of a guild dis- 
solved as a result of the formation of a compulsory guild 4 may go 
over with its liabilities (not to exceed the property) to the compulsory 
guild. Sick funds are normally to be transferred to the compulsory 
guild, and other benefit funds may be so transferred. 5 

The regulations for guilds in general apply also to compulsory 
guilds, with such modifications as the law specifically makes. 6 

All those who carry on independently in the district the trade or 
industry for which the compulsory guild is established are required to 
join. Exception is made of those who carry on the industry accord- 
ing to factory methods. The approval of the authorities is requisite 
for the accession of certain doubtful classes, as handworkers in ao-ri- 
culture or industry for pay who employ journeymen or apprentices 
and those engaged in house industries. 7 In addition to those required 
to join, others are entitled to do so. Such are (1) those included in 



» R. G. O., sec. 100, pp. 300fl. 
a Ibid., sec. 100a, p. 302. 

• Ibid., sec. 100b, p. 303. 

* Ibid., sec. 100k, pp. 308-309. 



» Ibid., sec. lOOi, pp. 309-10. 
• Ibid., sec. 100c, p. 304. 
T Ibid., sec. 100f, pp. 305fl. 



60 



GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 



classes 1 to 3, inclusive (p. 56), as well as all handworkers engaged in 
agriculture or industry for pay and who employ neither journeymen 
nor apprentices; and (2) those who carry on the industry of the 
guild according to factory methods, if the guild assembly votes for 
them. 1 In cases of question concerning right or duty of membership, 
the legal authorities decide the matter. 2 

The special care given to apprenticeship regulation is shown by 
the enforcing of stricter requirements for eligibility to committees 
responsible for the execution of the regulations on apprenticeship 
than for eligibility to other committees or to the guild directorate. 
Journeymen also who are on these apprenticeship committees must 
meet higher tests than for membership on other committees. 3 The 
detailed regulations of apprenticeship by the assembly of a com- 
pulsory guild requires the approval of the superior "administrative 
authorities, whose decision must be preceded by a hearing of the 
chamber of industry of the district. 4 This closer degree of supervision 
than is required for the regulations of free guilds is maintained 
because the regulations of compulsory guilds must be followed by all 
its members, whether required to join or not; and even handworkers 
who employ neither journeymen nor apprentices may, under certain 
conditions, be required to join. Thus all handworkers in the industry 
and district may be brought under the guild, and through them 
employees of all grades may be indirectly affected. To require all 
handworkers who employ neither journeymen nor apprentices to 
join the guild, the assembly must first vote for the proposal, a majority 
of those to be included must approve and the requirements as to the 
extent of the guild district must be met. 5 

Because of their compulsory nature, these guilds are not allowed 
to require a member to share in any benefit fund other than the guild 
sick fund. No cooperative business may be established by a com- 
pulsory guild, such as funds for loaning, cooperative purchase or sale 
bureaus, etc.* Further, no compulsory guild may act in restraint of 
trade by limiting the prices its members may charge or the customers 
they accept. 7 Guild contribution from members may by permission 
of the central authorities of the State be collected by addition to an 
industry tax, if such exist. 8 

A compulsory guild may be dissolved by order of the authorities, 
but only when three-fourths of the members vote in favor of the 
measure. A further check is put on dissolution by declaring the 
division of the guild property between the members to be illegal. 
Such property shall go to the guild welfare funds or to a new free 



» R. G. O., sec. lOOg, pp. 307ft. 
*Ibid., sec. lOOh, p. 308. 
» Ibid., sec. lOOr, p. 313. 
* Ibid., sec. lOOp, p. 313. 



* Ibid., sec. lOOu, pp. 317-318. 
« Ibid., sec. lOOn, pp. 311ff. 
» Ibid., lOOq, p. 313. 
» Ibid., sec. 100s, pp. 314ft. 



GUILDS AND CHAMBERS OF INDUSTRY. 61 

guild for the same industry, or to the chamber of industry of the dis- 
trict, to be used for one of the objects stated just above. 1 

Machinery by which neighboring guilds can cooperate is provided 
in the guild councils (Innungsausschiisse), which may be established 
for all or for several guilds standing under the same supervisory 
authority. Such councils concern themselves with the common 
interests of the participating guilds, which may delegate to them 
further rights and duties. The central government of each State 
may give to a guild council certain definite legal status, including 
limited liability (limited to its property). Guild councils are subject 
to the legal authorities much as are guilds. 2 

Guild associations (Innungsverbande), unlike guild councils, are 
formed only by guilds not under the same supervisory authorities. 
Their purpose is to advance their industry by assisting guilds, guild 
councils, chambers of industry, and authorities to carry out their 
legal duties. They are further authorized to regulate the furnishing 
of information about employment, and to found and support trade 
schools. 3 An association may allow individual handworkers to join 
and represent their guild in the association. 4 

The associations are under the supervision of the superior admin- 
istrative authorities in whose district their headquarters are. 5 The 
association statutes must be approved by the authorities. 8 They 
must furnish annually a list of the guilds which are members in the 
association. 7 The association directors are authorized to present a 
report and proposals to the proper authorities and are obliged, on 
demand of these authorities, to give due attention to industrial 
questions. 8 All assemblies of an association are to be held in its 
district, and may be forbidden or stopped if, by advance notice of 
the orders of the day or otherwise, there is evidence of purpose to 
exceed the legal sphere or powers of the association. 9 An associa- 
tion may establish benefit funds for the members of the constituent 
guilds and their employees. 10 The national senate (Bundesrat) may 
grant special legal status to any guild association, with limited 
liability (limited to its property). 11 

Halfway between the official Government authorities and the pri- 
marily private guilds stand the semiofficial chambers of industry 
(Handwerkskammern), literally, chambers of handwork. Some of 
these bear the name of Gewerbekammer, but all are organized under 
the same law. These chambers are established by authorization of 
the State central authorities 12 to represent the interests of hand- 

i R. G. O., sec. lOOt, pp. 315ff. « Ibid., sec. 104c, pp. 340ff. 

s Ibid., sees. 101-102, pp. 318-320. * Ibid., sec. 104d, p. 340. 

« Ibid., sec. 104, pp. 336fl. i° Ibid., sec. 104i, pp. 342ff. 

* Ibid., sec. 104a, pp. 338ff. U Ibid., sec. 104g, pp. 341JE. 

* Ibid., sec. 104k, pp. 343ff. « Or of several States, if the chamber overlap 

* Ibid., see. 104b, pp. 3383. State boundary. 
» Ibid., sec. 104c, pp. 339fl. 



62 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

work. Branch chambers may be established, or divisions for groups 
of industries. 1 The district for one of these chambers is much larger 
than that typical of guilds. In 1910 there were about 71 chambers 
of industry in Germany. 2 

The chamber of industry is an elective body, elected (1) by the 
handworker guilds 3 having headquarters in the district of the cham- 
ber, and from among their members, and (2) by the industrial socie- 
ties (Gewerbevereinen) and other societies which pursue the industrial 
interests of handwork, of whose membership at least one-half are 
handworkers who belong to no guild and reside in the district of the 
chamber. 4 

The requirements for eligibility to the chamber are rigid. Each 
member must be eligible to be a juror; must be 30 years old; must 
have carried on a handwork trade at least three years in the district 
of the chamber and be authorized to train apprentices. 5 By high 
qualifications and long term of office, efficient service is secured from 
the members. The term of membership in the chamber and on its 
committees is six years, half of the members retiring every three 
years. 6 The chamber may elect, according to its statutes, additional 
qualified members up to a fifth of its original number, and may invite 
qualified men with advisory power to its sessions. It may delegate 
regular or special duties to its committees. 7 

The special concerns of the chamber of industry are: (1) The de- 
tailed regulation of apprenticeship; (2) the supervision of the regu- 
lations concerning apprenticeship; (3) the aiding of the State and 
local authorities in the promotion of handwork by reports on ques- 
tions important to handwork; (4) to debate motions and present 
conclusions and annual reports concerning handwork to the authori- 
ties; (5) to establish examining committees to manage the journey- 
men's examination; and (6) to form committees of appeal from the 
examining committees. 8 

The chamber has the right to be heard in all weighty matters con- 
cerning the common interests of handwork or any of its branches. It 
is further authorized to concern itself with institutions for the pro- 
motion of industrial, technical, and moral advancement of masters, 
journeymen, and apprentices, as well as to establish and support 
trade schools. 

i R. G. O., sec. 103, pp. 321ff. * R. G. O., sees., 103a, and 118, p. 606fl. 

* Coelsch, pp. 42, 128. 6 Ibid., sec. 103b, pp. 323ff. 

• Handworker guilds are all guilds the majority 6 Ibid., 103c, p. 324. 

ofwhosemembersare handworkers. R.G. O.. 'Ibid., 103d, p. 324. 

sec. 118, pp. 606fl. • Ibid., 103c, pp. 325H. 



GUILDS AND CHAMBERS OF INDUSTRY. 63 

The guilds and guild councils are obliged to follow the orders 
issued by the chambers of industry which cover their district and 
which are within its powers. All statutes and regulations of the 
guilds and guild councils which conflict with the regulations of the 
chamber of industry in authority are invalid. 1 The costs of the estab- 
lishment and activities of the chamber of industry are, in Prussia, to 
be paid by the handworkers of the district and collected like a tax. 2 
In Prussia, also, the permanent officials of the chambers have the 
rights and duties of State officers and take oath as they do. 3 

Factory industries are normally regulated by the semiofficial 
chambers of commerce, which hold for commerce, including. factory 
industries, a position similar to that of the chambers of industry in 
handwork. However, these chambers of commerce are much less 
interested and much less zealous in the regulation of factory industries 
than their fellows in handwork. They commonly neglect this regu- 
lation, largely or wholly. Especially is this evident relative to the 
highly important conditions of apprentices and youthful workers in 
factories and to industrial education. In consequence of this 
neglect, some chambers of industry have stepped into the breach and 
themselves regulate apprenticeship in factories. 4 

iR. G. 0.,sec. 103fl. p. 327. 

2 Ibid., sec. 122, pp. 609ff. 

s Ibid., sec. 120, p. 608. 

* Thus the Dusseldorf Handwerkskammer, the second largest in Germany, with several branches, regu- 
lates apprentices in factories. Data obtained from interviews with directors of Handwerkskammcrs in 
Dusseldorf and Aachen. 



CHAPTER VII. 

APPRENTICESHIP. 

We have seen how in the United States apprenticeship has declined, 
and how throughout its recent history the prevailing attitude toward 
it has been that of laissezfaire. The natural result of such an attitude 
and course of action has been inadequate preparation and over- 
specialization of the boy seeking to learn a trade, and his frequent 
exploitation as a mere youthful worker. In a strong contrast with 
American practice concerning apprenticeship is that of Germany. 
Conserving all that was possible of the virtues of the old-time appren- 
ticeship, she has added new virtues to the system, minimized the 
former evils, and with the most deliberate care sought to improve 
the conditions of entrance upon and preparation for the trades. Effi- 
ciency, as always in modern times, has been her watchword, and 
regulation her means. So we find a well- developed legal system of 
regulation, which to strongly individualistic minds involves over- 
regulation. Whether it be so, or whether the system of laissezfaire 
in vogue in our own country be better, we shall seek to determine 
from the data here presented. 

What do the Germans understand by the term Lehrling (appren- 
tice) ? The most exact answers are to be found in the National 
Industrial Law and in certain court decisions. They agree in regard- 
ing the apprentice as a young person who is engaged in an industry 
chiefly for the purpose of learning the industry or a part of it. 1 The 
chief criterion of the industrial law as to whether a given individual 
is an apprentice or not is whether he is learning the trade or not. 2 
An apprentice is thus to be clearly distinguished from a youthful 
worker who is not an apprentice, for the latter even though working in 
the same shop or even side by side with the apprentice is not necessarily 
taught the trade and is protected by none of the regulations which 
safeguard the apprentice. Apprenticeship is the usual mode of 
entrance to a handwork trade; but factory industries are entered 
by boys either as apprentices or as youthful workers (called, to dis- 
tinguish them from apprentices, unskilled workers — ungelernte Ar- 
oeiter) . 

The purpose of apprenticeship is primarily the efficient training 
of the apprentice, and this is regarded as of the utmost importance 
to his individual well-being in his trade and out, and of the greatest 
civic importance, for the efficiency and general development of whole 

i Coelsch, pp. 30-32. 8 Bitzera, in Coelsch, p. 33. 

64 



APPRENTICESHIP. 65 

social classes of the citizens depend largely or chiefly on the proper 
training of apprentices. 

I can not leave the matter even thus, for investigation in Germany 
leads me to conclude that the core of the industrial education situa- 
tion there is not the industrial schools, but the system of apprentice- 
ship. 1 For by far the larger part of the training of the great ma- 
jority of apprentices still takes place, not in the school, but in the 
workshop. The extraordinary growth of industrial schools in Ger- 
many during the last few decades should not blind us to this fact. 
Indeed the system of industrial schools, so far as that is made up by 
the compulsory improvement schools, is in a sense but a part of the 
apprenticeship system, though the compulsory attendance on these 
schools applies also to unskilled youthful workers as well as to appren- 
tices. Hour for hour, the industrial schools probably leave a deeper 
impress on the apprentices and other students attending them than 
do the shops; but we must not forget that the shops have the appren- 
tices an average of perhaps 56 hours a week and the schools but 
4 to 8. 

Some of the provisions of the National Industrial Law on appren- 
ticeship are applicable to factories and handwork industries alike; 
while others apply only to handwork, which is thus more closely regu- 
lated. 2 The ordinary provisions concerning apprentice contract, etc., 
do not apply to apprentices in teaching workshops (Lehrwerkstatten) 
recognized by the State nor to the apprenticeship of a son to his 
father. 3 The first of these exceptions is probably desirable where the 
workshop in question is the actual substitute for that of the master, 
but not, as in Baden and Wurttemberg, for regular shops merely 
supervised by the State. 4 In case a son be apprenticed to his father 
the above exception applies only if the chamber of industry be 
informed in writing of the existence of the apprenticeship, the trade, 
day of its beginning, and its duration. This provision applies to all 
apprentices, handworkers, and others, who are under the supervision 
of a chamber of industry. This is for the purpose of protecting the 
apprentice in certain exigencies, but is not intended to replace the 
paternal relation by a legal one. 5 

The right to have apprentices is very carefully limited. No one 
not a citizen is allowed the right. 6 Grave and repeated offenses against 

1 Prof. Charles McCarthy did not realize the vitality of apprenticeship in Germany to-day when he made 
the following statement: "The Germans have studied out a plan for replacing the apprenticeship system, 
now worn out because of the growth of the modern factory system and the minute division of labor entailed 
by this system. * * * The Germans taking the remnants of the apprenticeship system, which of course 
still exists here and there, have added to it the continuation school." (Italics mine.) Report of Wisconsin 
Commission on Industrial and Agricultural Training, 1911, p. 20. 

1 Statements below concerning the law of apprenticeship apply to all apprentices unless otherwise stated. 

3R. G. O., sec. 126b, p. 407ff. 

< Coelsch, p. 69. 

»R. G. O., sec. 126b, pp. 407ff. and Coelsch, pp. 69, 70. 

6R. G. O., sec. 126, p. 406. 

88740°— 13 5 



66 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

apprentices or unfitness (bodily or mental) to train them permit the 
temporary or permanent withdrawal of the right. 1 These regulations 
cover all industry. In handwork, in addition, all who train (i. e., 
supervise and instruct) apprentices must be at least 24 years old and 
must have passed their master's examination (and thus have the title 
of master) . If such a person does not have the title of master in the 
industry or branch in which he wishes to train apprentices, he may be 
permitted to do so if he has fulfilled the required time of apprentice- 
ship and passed the journeyman's examination in that branch of 
industry or if he has for five years carried on independently the hand- 
work concerned or been for an equal period engaged in the work as 
foreman or in a similar position. 2 The higher administrative authori- 
ties may confer the right to train apprentices on others than those who 
fulfill the above conditions after the chamber of industry and any 
guild for the industry and district have been heard. Exception is 
further made from the requirement of the master's title for a period 
not to exceed one year in the case of the death of the employer, in 
order that the apprentices may continue in the establishment. 3 
Journeymen are permitted to instruct apprentices in single technical 
manipulations. Apprenticeship in a handwork trade may be carried 
to completion in a factory if supplementary training be secured in a 
teaching workshop supported or recognized by the State or by other 
institution for industrial education. Before recognition of other 
institutions for the purpose the chamber of industry of the district 
must be given ample opportunity to present its views. 4 

One who meets the full requirements qualifying him to train appren- 
tices in one branch of industry may train them also in other branches 
of the same industry. One qualified in one industry may train 
apprentices also in related industries. The local chamber of industry 
decides as to what industries are to be considered as related. 5 The 
criteria on which these decisions are based are primarily either simi- 
larity of technique (as textile industries), or of the raw materials (as 
metal industries), dependence of one industry upon another for its 
raw materials, cooperation of several industries to produce the same 
product (as the building trades), or relations of the products in use 
(as food products). 6 The differing histories of industry in different 
localities have resulted in different decisions as to what are related 
industries. 6 

Throughout Germany children must attend, the common school 
(Volksschule), unless permitted to attend some other school, until 

i R. G. O., sec. 126a, pp. 406, 407. 

* R. G. 0.,sec. 129,pp. 418ff. This provision has eased the transition to the present law, especially for old 
handworkers without the title of master. Cf. Coelsch, p. 46. 
s R. G. O., sec. 129, pp. 418£f. 
< R. G. O., sec. 129, pp. 418S. 
« R. G. O., sec. 129a, p. 422. 
« Coelsch, pp. 41, 42. 



APPRENTICESHIP. 67 

they are 14 years old. 1 The great majority leave school then, and 
the boys (with whom we shall be mainly concerned) go to work under 
an employer. They must do this in most cases to supplement the 
meager family income. They may go into agriculture, commerce, or 
industry. Those who choose industry have before them the alterna- 
tives of skilled or unskilled work. Those whose families are not well 
enough off to forego the somewhat larger immediate wage, or who 
have less foresight, enter the ranks of the unskilled either as youthful 
workers (ungelernte arbeiter) or as errand boys and the like (Lauf- 
burschen). They will receive as wage, on the average, 8 to 10 marks 
($1.92 to $2.40) a week the first year, rising in about four years to 
their maximum of 15 to 18, or even 20, marks ($3.60 to $4.32, or 
$4. SO). 2 

The employers do not want the boys as apprentices so young as 14 
years of age, and do not regard them as very useful for the first year 
or so. But the boys' need is pressing; they must have work, and the 
employers are constrained to take them. As a result, they are set at 
odd jobs for the first period of their apprenticeship. An apprentice 
will be paid 2.5 marks (60 cents) a week for the first year, on the 
average, 3 to 4 marks (72 to 96 cents) the second, 4 to 5 (96 cents to 
$1.20) the third, and 5 to 6 ($1.20 to $1.44) the fourth year, if the 
apprenticeship lasts so long. 2 Handwork apprentices sometimes 
receive board and room and a trifle of pocket money in lieu of wage. 3 
Those parents who can do a little better by their boys keep them 
longer in school (Gymnasium or Realschule, rather than a trade 
school usually), if possible, until they have won the coveted one-year 
military service certificate, which would normally keep them in school 
until they are 16 years at least. 4 Such boys, not many in number, 
begin their apprenticeship at about 16 years, and ordinarily learn 
faster, probably because of greater maturity and habits of applica- 
tion, than most of those who entered the same industries at 14 years 
of age. 

The factories, like most in the United States, do not desire many, if 
any, apprentices ; though they call for many unskilled workers, both 
youthful and mature. Such workers, other than apprentices, need 
not be given any instruction in the factory. 5 Apprenticeship in fac- 
tories differs from that in handwork in that the legal regulations are 
less rigid, the supervision of these regulations (nominally by the 
chambers of commerce, but often actually by the chambers of indus- 
try 6 ) is less complete, the tendency to specialization is more marked, 
and in consequence the chances of the apprent'ee for a well-rounded 

1 With few exceptions. 

2 Herr Schulinspektor August Kasten, Hamburg. 

' Dr. Rudolph Gornandt, a director of Hamburg Gewerbekammer. 
«Cf. ch. 5, p. 51, notel. 

»Herr Direktor Jung, Gewerbliche Fortbildungschule, Barmen. 
•Cf. ch. 6, p. 62. 



68 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

grasp of his trade are ordinarily poorer than in handwork, and his 
resulting need of supplementary training in industrial school is 
greater. Most apprentices, however, learn a handwork trade. 

As the boy seeks to choose his trade, guided by the relative oppor- 
tunities and his own leanings, he finds the guilds, chambers of indus- 
try, and other industrial bodies ready to help him in the choice. The 
way in which the advice is given and the boy aided to secure a place 
varies from place to place. Special bureaus in some localities advise 
him, booklets about the trades furnish him data on which to decide, 
and employment bureaus, public and private, help him to secure a 
position. 1 The machinery of vocational guidance, so new in our own 
country, 2 has been for a long time in operation among guilds and other 
industrial associations of Germany. Even there, however, the ma- 
chinery is not fully developed, is not everywhere active, and many 
boys drift or fall into their occupations, instead of making a rational 
choice, based on knowledge of the significant facts. 

It has long been customary for apprenticeships to be begun by a 
period of probation, and the national industrial law has since 1897 
required such a period. By it either party is given the right to 
withdraw within four weeks unless a longer period, not to exceed three 
months, has been agreed upon. 3 This right of withdrawal can not 
be waived. 4 Originally the probationary period was desired to pre- 
vent thoughtless entering on apprenticeships, 5 but now it is intended 
to show both parties whether they can probably bring the appren- 
ticeship to a successful conclusion, and whether the work be suited 
to the ability and strength of the boy. 8 

The repeal of the older medieval apprentice regulations resulted 
in the neglect of the apprentice, morally and physically, shown by 
insubordination, breach of contract, and inefficiency. 7 For several 
decades compulsory written contracts were popularly demanded, 
chiefly on the grounds that such contracts would limit the utiliza- 
tion of minors by their parents, protect apprentices from exploitation 
as youthful workers, and employers from breach of contract, and 
generally increase the feeling of responsibility and improve the regu- 
lation of apprenticeship. Since 1893, such contracts have been re- 
quired by the National Industrial Law. 8 The apprentice contract 
must be executed in writing within four weeks of the beginning of the 

i Cf. list of booklets on vocational guidance, in References, p. 151. 

2 Pioneered by the Vocational Bureau, Boston, recently founded, whose activities "are wide and expand- 
ing, and example illuminating, 
a R. G. O., sec. 127b, pp. 412, 413. 
« Coelsch, p. 91. 

* Erhebungen des Reichskanzleramts ilber die Verhaltnisse der Lehrlings usw. 1875, quoted in Coelsch, p. 89. 
« Coelsch, p. 88, 89. 
1 1bid., p. 50. 
» Ibid., p. 53. 



APPRENTICESHIP. 69 

apprenticeship and must contain certain provisions. 1 If no written 
contract be executed, or if the execution be delayed (classed as a 
"continuous offense" — Dauerdelikt), or if some of the provisions be 
omitted, the contract is still valid, 2 but the employer is punishable 
for each offense by fine of not over 20 marks ($4.80) or imprisonment 
of not over three days. 3 But not even in law-abiding Germany, and 
with such a law, do we find all apprenticeships have a written con- 
tract. In handwork they are nigh universal and in the larger fac- 
tories usual, but in the smaller factories they are generally or often 
absent. 3 The carelessness and ignorance of the children and their 
parents (chiefly the latter) in some districts are largely responsible for 
the lack of more contracts. Such parents wish to receive as much 
money as possible from their children's work, and so wish to have 
them free to change to whichever factory offers the largest reward 
for the time being. This breaks up the continuity of their instruction 
and is bad for them. 4 

The required provisions in the apprentice contract are statements 
of — (1) the industry or branch; (2) the length of the apprenticeship; 
(3) the mutual services required; and (4) the legal and other condi- 
tions under which one party may withdraw from the contract. 5 
Under the mutual service (3) are to be specified the money paid to 
the master, if any (for board and lodging, unless otherwise stated), 
wages, board and lodging, furnishing of tools, washing, etc. 6 The 
contract must be signed by the employer or his responsible represent- 
ative, by the apprentice, and by the latter 's legal representative. 7 
Absence of one of these signatures makes any claim based on the 
contract invalid. 8 The legal representative of the apprentice is liable 
for the fulfillment of the contract only if so specified, and then only to 
the extent of his authority over the boy. 8 One copy of the contract 
is to be furnished him. The employer, to make possible public super- 
vision of the apprentice contracts, must turn over the contracts to the 
local police authorities on demand. 9 If the employer be a hand- 
worker and guild member, he must furnish a copy of the contract to 
his guild in lieu of the police, within 14 days after execution. The 
guild may require that the contract be executed before it. In this 
case the guild must furnish a copy of the contract to the master and 
another to the father or guardian of the apprentice. 10 

With handworkers, then, the guild supervises the apprentice con- 
tract in place of the police. The chambers of industry, however, 

1 R. G. O., sec. 126b, pp. 407ff. « Schicker, in Coelsch, pp. 62, 63. 

^Schieker, Reger, Landmann-Rohmer; in »R. G. O., sec. 126b, pp. 407ff. 

Coelsch, p. 54. ■ Landmann-Rohmer and Nelken, in Coelsch, 

» R. G. O., sec. 150, p. 503ff. p. 65. 

* Herr Direktor Jung, Barmen. » R. G. O., sec. 126b, pp. 407ff. 

s R. G. O., sec. 126, pp. 407ft. '« Ibid., 129b, p. 423. 



70 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

may * regulate the guilds in this supervision, and all of them have 
done so. 2 Those masters under a chamber of industry must make all 
their apprentice contracts according to specified normal forms and 
are subject further to the orders for the regulation of apprenticeship 
(Vorschriften zur Regelung des Lehrlingswesens) of the chamber. 3 
The apprentice contracts of the Prussian chambers of industry are 
all of about the same form, based on the recommendation of the 
minister of commerce. Those of other States vary more or less from 
these. The Prussian contracts require compulsory sick insurance of 
the apprentice, provision of enough time for the apprentice to make 
his journeyman's piece, and specifications as to who is to furnish the 
materials for and who is finally to own the piece. 3 The Prussian and 
most other chambers of industry forbid the employers to take appren- 
tices whose lack of school knowledge or bodily or mental defects unfit 
them for the apprenticeship in question. 3 The Prussian and Baden 
chambers require the discharge of apprentices in case of their obstinate 
failure to attend the required school. 4 

The apprentice may take up his residence with his employer, if 
they so agree, though this is not done so much as in former days. 
In case of. such residence, only such housework may be required of 
the apprentice as does not interfere with his training. If he receive 
neither board nor lodging from his employer, he may not be required 
to do any household work. 5 This provision was new in 1897 and 
shows a development of public opinion since the law of 1878, which 
approved of such work. 8 The financial relations of the employer and 
apprentice vary. Sometimes the apprentice pays the employer a 
sum (Lehrgeld), usually for board and lodging. Probably in the 
majority of cases the employer pays the apprentice, but only a small 
sum (cf. p. 67 above). Coelsch states that where the apprentice is 
paid a wage it is usually to stimulate his activity. 7 The tendency is 
for board and lodging to be furnished less often than in former days 
and a wage to be more often paid. 

On entering the apprenticeship relation, employer and apprentice 
thereby assume certain legal duties and liabilities. The employer 
is, according to the law of 1869, 8 to make it his business, by teaching 
and practice, to train the apprentice to become a skilled journeyman. 
The employer must instruct the apprentice in all the work occurring 
in his business (which may be wide or narrow, according to how 
specialized his business is) . 9 This does not require training in more 
than the trade or branch of industry specified in the apprentice con- 
tract, but it is a legal safeguard against overspecialization. Further, 

i According to R. G. O., sec. 103c (cf. p. 63, ch. 6). ' Coelsch, p. 77. 

2 Coelsch, pp. 66, 67. ' Ibid. , p. 97. 

sibid., p. 83. 81869, R. G. O., sec. 118. cf. Coelsch, p. 71. 

♦ Ibid., p. 84. 6 R. G. O., sec. 127, pp. 410, 411. 

*R. G. O., sec. 127, pp. 410ff. 



APPRENTICESHIP. 71 

it includes practical training only, and not theoretical. 1 The 
employer must allow time for his apprentices under 18 to attend a 
school recognized by the authorities as an improvement school (see 
further chap. 8, p. 81 ). 2 He must train the apprentice himself or 
through a qualified specially appointed representative. 3 No excep- 
tions to this rule are allowed. It is not sufficient to assign an appren- 
tice to a journeyman without specific instructions to the latter to 
instruct him. The journeyman must also have certain qualifica- 
tions. 4 The employer must watch over the conduct and morals of 
his apprentice, 5 both in and out of his working hours. 8 In factories 
and large handwork shops, supervision away from work has been 
found impossible. 7 Employers in such establishments have the 
recourse of discharge of an apprentice who commits certain offenses. 8 
The employer must protect his apprentice from abuse by other 
workers, and must give him only tasks suited to his strength. 9 
He must allow the apprentice sufficient time and opportunity to 
attend religious service on Sundays and holidays. 9 The employer is 
liable for neglect of his legal duties to his apprentice to a fine of not 
over 150 marks or imprisonment for not over four weeks. 10 

The apprentice, for his part, is, according to the law, thrown under 
the fatherly authority of his employer and of those appointed to 
instruct him, and obliged to obedience and truth, industry, and prob- 
ity." This provision includes the right of bodily punishment by the 
employer or his responsible representative, but not by the teaching 
representative. 12 Irregular or improper punishment or that danger- 
ous to health is forbidden. 13 Those apprentices whose employers 
stand under chambers of industry must also follow their regulations, 
which include in all cases the obligation to obey all the proper orders 
of the employer or his legal representative and to obey all the shop 
regulations of the employer. 14 The apprentice may be required to do 
other mechanical work than that in his trade; for judicial decisions 
have concluded that his whole working power is at the command of 
his master, though the fact that the chief purpose of the apprentice- 
ship is training must be respected. 15 The apprentice of an employer 

i Coelsch, p. 73. 10 R G- secs 148 _ 9 pp 499£f 

'*• G - °- sec - 120 ' PP" 38 °- 384 - » R. G. O., sec. 127a, pp. 411-12. 

>R.G.O.,sec.l27,pp.410,411. u Coelsch, p. 85; and Nelken and Schicker, in 

<Coelsch, p. 74. Coelsch, p. 86. 

•R. G. O., sec. 127, pp. 410-411. a R G a> sec 127a> pp m _ u 

•Urteil. R. G., in Coelsch, p. 74. ,< Coelsch; p . 86 . 

' Ibid "> PP- 74_75 - 16 Reger, in Coelsch, pp. 76, 78. 

«R. G. O., sec. 127b, pp. 412ff. 

! R. G. O., sec. 127, pp. 410-411. Other duties of 

the employer are to be found elsewhere in this 

chapter. 



72 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

under a chamber of industry must care for tools intrusted to him. 1 
His father or guardian is liable for the obedience, diligence, and 
punctual school attendance of the apprentice, but this liability 
amounts to little unless the father or guardian obligates himself in 
the apprentice contract to indemnify the master for any such mistake 
on the part of the apprentice. 2 

Certain circumstances permit the withdrawal from the appren- 
ticeship of one of the parties after the probation period and before 
the apprenticeship is completed. The employer may discharge his 
apprentice if (1) the latter has deceived him materially on signing 
the contract; (2) if he has thieved, lived dissolutely, etc.; (3) if he 
has left his work when unauthorized to do so or constantly refused 
to do his duty; (4) if despite warning he is careless about fire; (5) 
if he commits grave offenses against his employer or others in his 
business or family; (6) if he intentionally harms the goods of his 
employer or fellow workers ; (7) if he treats the families of his employer 
or fellows immorally; or (8) if he is unable to continue his work or 
has a loathsome disease. 3 ' 4 The apprentice may further be dis- 
charged if he repeatedly neglects his duties as specified by law, 5 or 
if he neglects the attendance on trade or improvement school. 3 The 
chambers of industry of Prussia and some others require those emplo}^- 
ers under their authority to discharge apprentices for bodily or 
mental defects or lack of skill or school training. 6 

The apprentice may withdraw if (1) his employer becomes unable 
to continue his work; (2) il the employer or members of his family 
abuse or act immorally toward the apprentice or his family; (3) if 
the employer does not pay the agreed wage, or furnish sufficient 
work, if piece wage be paid, or makes excessive gains from the appren- 
tice; or (4) if the continuation of the work would be dangerous to the 
life or health of the apprentice, which fact was not known to him 
when the apprenticeship began. The apprentice may further with- 
draw if the master neglect in a dangerous way his duties to the 
apprentice relative to health, morals or training, or misuse his power 
of fatherly discipline, or becomes unable to carry out his contractual 
obligations. 7 If the master die and the business be continued, the 
apprentice may withdraw if he does so within four weeks. 8 

Neither party to the contract may waive any of the above legal 
grounds for permitted withdrawal, but they may, says Coelsch, 
specify additional ones. 9 The apprentice must be released by his 

1 Coelsch, p. 87. 

2 Ibid, p. 87. 

s R. G. O., sec. 127b, pp. 412ff. 

* Ibid., sec. 123, pp. 397£f. 

6 Ibid., sec. 127a, pp. 411-412. 
6 Coelsch, p. 95. 
i R. G. O., sec. 127b, pp. 412ff. 
8 Ibid., sec. 124, pp. 400ff. 

• Coelsch, p. 95. Coelsch's view is disputed by several authorities, quoted on the same page. 



APPRENTICESHIP. 73 

employer within four weeks after his legal representative (or him- 
self, if he be of age) has given written notice to his employer of inten- 
tion to change his trade. The employer shall in such case note the 
reason for leaving in the apprentice's work book (Arbeitsbuch) ; and 
the apprentice shall be prevented from working at the abandoned 
trade under another master within nine months, except with the 
approval of his former employer/ or from working as a youthful 
worker (not apprentice) for the same period. 2 

The earlier industrial law (as that of 1869) allowed rather easy 
change of trade, and thus withdrawal by apprentices, and many with- 
drew in their second or third year. The Society for Social Politics 
(Verein fur Sozialpolitik) declared in 1875, after investigation, that 
because of such breach of contract poorer preparation of apprentices 
resulted, for the employers must utilize their working powers early, 
lest they leave and the employers lose thereby. Payment of appren- 
tices was one cause of such breach; for this parents were at fault, 
considering wage more than preparation ; and employers, for seeking 
to secure discipline by payment of wage. 3 Apprentices were best 
held by payment of a wage and holding a part until the apprentice- 
ship was completed. 4 In 1878 the law required compulsory return 
of runaway apprentices. 5 The law now provides that if an appren- 
tice leaves his employer without legal cause, the latter may only 
demand his return if the contract be in writing. The police authori- 
ties can, at their option, require the apprentice to return to his 
master if the latter complain within a week, except when a judge 
decides otherwise. Force, fine (up to 50 marks), or imprisonment 
up to five days may be used by the police to enforce return. 6 A 
number of safeguards are tin-own around this procedure, to protect 
the apprentice from abuse — the prompt complaint required from the 
employer, the option of the police, and the possible interference by 
a court. 

In case the apprenticeship terminates prematurely, damages may 
be collected only if the contract be written. In certain cases, to be 
valid, the sort and amount of damages must be specified in the con- 
tract. 7 If the apprentice leave the apprenticeship illegally, the dam- 
ages shall, except as a lesser amount be agreed upon, amount to not 
over half the customary wage of journeymen in the industry of the 
employer for the time omitted, but not for over six months. The 
father of the apprentice is liable, so far as he has the care of the boy, 
for his breach of contract, as is also any employer who induced him to 

>R. G. O., sec. 127c, p. 415. 

1 Landmann-Rolimer, Schicker, Rohrscheidt, and Nelken, in Coelsch, p. 102. 

3 Schriften its Verein fiir Sozialpolitik, in Coelsch, p. 103. 

* Erhebungen, 1875, a. a. O. S., in Coelsch, p. 104. 

* Coelsch, p. 105. 

« R. G. O., sec. 127d, pp. 413ff. 
» Ibid., sec. 127f, pp. 415-416. 



74 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

leave his apprenticeship or who gave him work, whether cognizant 
of the breach of contract or not. 1 Some chambers of industry specify 
damages for breach of contract in their required normal contracts, 
but most merely note that agreement on damages is necessary. 2 

There is no limitation to the length of apprenticeship in factories. 
In handwork apprenticeship must last usually three and not to exceed 
four years. Within the limit the length may be set by the chambers 
of industry with the approval of the higher administrative authorities 
for single industries or branches, and after the guilds and industrial 
societies concerned have had a hearing. The chambers of industry 
are further authorized to release apprentices in individual cases from 
the restrictions of the established period. 3 They may make the period 
dependent on individual efficiency or on attendance at a trade or 
improvement school. 4 Almost all chambers of industry make regula- 
tions concerning the period of apprenticeship. 5 Between the different 
chambers the regulations differ considerably. Of 68 chambers an- 
swering an inquiry of Coelsch, 9 made no regulations, 37 set the mini- 
mum at three and the maximum at four years, while 15 required three 
years uniformly. 6 The regulations seem to make the period too uni- 
form, as between the several trades; and the chambers do not provide 
sufficiently for individual exceptions, the latter largely to avoid dis- 
putes with employers. 7 Coelsch thinks that the period averages too 
long, on the whole, and regards three to four years for the difficult 
and two to four for the easier trades as desirable. 8 Where the cham- 
bers of industry do not regulate the matter the guilds, free or compul- 
sory, may do so with certain limitations. 9 

At the close of the period of apprenticeship the employer must 
furnish to the apprentice a certificate (Lehrzeugnis) stating the trade, 
length of the apprenticeship, the proficiency reached in knowledge 
and ability, and the conduct of the apprentice. 10 This is to be given 
whether the apprentice has done well or not, if he complete the 
apprenticeship, and whether he wishes it or not. 11 The local authori- 
ties are to freely certify to the certificate (merely attesting the em- 
ployer's signature 12 ). Where guilds or other representatives of 
employers exist, their apprentice letters (Lehrbriefe) take the place 
of the employer's certificates. 13 

Toward and at the close of his apprenticeship the apprentice, if he 
be in handwork, must be given opportunity by his employer to take 
the journeyman's examination (Gesellenpriifung). 14 This includes the 
making of a journeyman's piece. The law requires the handwork 

i R. G. O., sec. 127g, pp. 416-117. * Ibid., pp. 60-62. 

2 Coelsch, p. 112. » Ibid., p. 62; R. G. O., sec. 81a, 3, p. 254. 

s R. G. O., sec. 130a, pp. 423-424. i° R. G. O., sec. 127c, p. 413. 

1 Coelsch, p. 57. » Coelsch, p. 81. 

* Ibid., p. 57. 12 Ibid., p. 80. 

e Coelsch, pp. 57, 58. «R. G. O., sec. 127c, p. 413. 

1 1bid., pp. 59, 60. " R. G. O., sec. 131c, pp. 424-425. 



APPRENTICESHIP. 



75 



apprentice to take this examination and his employer and master to 
hold him to it. 1 The chambers of industry in some regions, notably 
in Prussia and Bavaria, reiterate and try to enforce this requirement. 2 
To have passed the examination involves advancement to the journey- 
man. 3 But as a matter of fact many handwork apprentices never 
take the examination, and though the chambers of industry would 
like to force them to do so, the existing law is in this respect too weak 
for the purpose. Factory apprentices need not take the examination, 
and very few do so. The celebrated Krupp Steel Works in Essen seek 
to have their apprentices take the examination, which they conduct 
themselves, for the sake of indicating the degrees of individual progress 
made, but they do not require this, nor advance the journeyman any 
the less if he omit it. 4 The State central authorities can require the 
journeyman's examination to be passed by all who receive certificates 
from teaching workshops, institutions for industrial education, or exam- 
ination authorities whose certificate qualifies for Government service. 5 
An examination committee is to be established for every compulsory 
guild, but for free guilds only when a chamber of industry empowers 
them to hold examinations. So far as examinations in individual 
industries are not provided by guilds, institutions of instruction, 
or examining authorities, the chamber of industry shall arrange 
such examinations. The examining committee consists of a chair- 
man, chosen by the chamber of industry, and at least two assistants, 
chosen as a rule for three years, and of whom one-half must be 
journeymen who have passed the examination. 9 The examination 
must show that the apprentice is able to command in his industry 
the necessary dexterity and ability with sufficient certainty, and also 
that he is informed concerning the value, preservation, and handling 
of the raw materials to be worked with, and the recognition of their 
good and bad qualities. The procedure of the examination is 
determined by the superior administrative authorities with the 
agreement of the chamber of industry. Bookkeeping may be 
required, in addition to the above-stated subjects. 7 For admission 
to the examination the apprentice must furnish his certificate of 
apprenticeship, and the certificate of attendance on an improvement 
or trade school, if such attendance was required of him. The exam- 
ining committee note the passing of the examination on the appren- 
ticeship certificate or apprenticeship letter. 8 Its chairman may 
appeal from the committee's decision to the chamber of industry. 9 
The State central authorities may amend these regulations for the 
journeyman's examination, but may not lessen the requirements for 
passing it, as stated above. 10, 7 

i R. G. O., sec. 131c, pp 427-429. l Ibid. sec. 131a, p. 426. 

■ Coelsch, pp. 239-240. ■ Ibid., sec. 131b, pp. 425-427 

'• Dr. Schoppacher Handwerkskammer Sekretar, Dusseldorf. fc Ibid., sec. 131c, pp. 427-129. 

1 An engineer of Fried. Krupp A. G. 9 Ibid., sec.132, p. 429. 

1 R. U. O., sec. 131, pp. 424-425. "Ibid., sec. 132a, p. 42J 



76 GEEMAK INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

If an apprentice fail to pass the journeyman's examination, and 
the examining committee regard this as the fault of his employer, 
the apprentice may receive supplementary training from another 
employer, and the former employer be required to pay for Jiis pecu- 
niary loss. 1 

By national law (not industrial law) all those who pass a specified 
examination in any branch of handwork may obtain the one-year 
volunteer military certificate. This examination is chiefly theoreti- 
cal and is so hard that a young man passing it at, for example, 18 years 
of age, must be as able as any master workman. 2 Naturally, but few 
take this examination. 

If too many apprentices are held by an employer, so that their 
training is endangered, the lower administrative authorities may 
compel the dismissal of some, and limit the taking on of more than a 
certain number. 3 The dismissed apprentices, if their contracts be 
written, may demand an apprentice certificate and damages from 
their employer. The national senate (Bundesrat) may further 
regulate the maximum number of apprentices that may be held in 
establishments in a certain branch of industry. If such regulations 
are not made by the Bundesrath, they may be made by the several 
State central authorities. So far as these authorities have not legis- 
lated on the subject, the chambers of industry and guilds may, for 
those only who are under their charge (i. e., only handworkers, 
ordinarily), regulate the number of apprentices permitted. 4 In 1904, 
seven years after these provisions became law, neither the Bundesrat 
nor any State central authorities had made use of this regulative 
power. 5 Most of the chambers of industry have done so, however, 
some regulating all industries alike, and some making special regu- 
lations for special trades. 8 Many of these regulations seem too 
general and unsuited to varying conditions in different industries 
and with different employers. 7 How they have worked out in 
practice it is yet too soon to judge. 8 Few employers' associations 
or trades unions have sought to regulate the maximum number of 
apprentices in their trades. 9 In but few individual cases and in but 
few trades is there any excess of apprentices beyond what is desirable. 
The chamber of industry reports show a lack of journeymen and 
apprentices in the country and smaller cities, and the employment 
offices show a great lack of apprentices. So the attempts of the 
chambers of industry at regulation of the maximum number of 
apprentices seem to be on the whole not greatly needed. 10 

1 Handwerkskammer, Mannheim. 6 Coelsch, pp. 128-130. 

'Gustav Koepper, Sekretar, Handwerkskammer, Coblenz. 7 Ibid., pp. 114, 127. 

SB. G. O., sec. 128, pp. 417-418. »Ibid., p. 130. 

«Ibid., sec. 130, p. 423. 'Ibid., pp. 124-126. 

6 Erhebungen a. a. O. S., in Coelsch, p. 119. 10 Ibid., pp. 119, 121, 123. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 

German industrial schools took their rise in the Sunday afternoon 
and evening schools which had existed for several centuries in some 
parts of the country, dating back in one Baltic district as early as 
1569. 1 They were used to supplement the imperfect general educa- 
tion of the working boys and girls. Attendance was made compulsory 
up to the age of 18 or even until marriage, but this provision was not 
enforced. The Sunday afternoon schools were at first chiefly con- 
cerned with religious teaching, but later they became general continua- 
tion schools, 2 concerned merely to reiterate the lessons taught in the 
common schools, with perhaps some slight advance. Still later more 
and more industrial and commercial training crept in, as also into the 
evening schools. The schools in their early days were far from suc- 
cessful on account of the lack of rooms in which to meet and of equip- 
ment, the ill-assorted nature of the pupils, and incompetency of the 
teachers. The industrializing of many of these schools improved 
matters somewhat, but the fact that throughout almost all Germany 
to-day strong attempts are being made to abolish evening and Sunday 
instruction in favor of day instruction, even for apprentices at work, 
indicates that the drawbacks were serious. Many of the Sunday 
schools gradually differentiated themselves into drawing, trade, com- 
mercial, mechanical, and art schools. 3 

In Prussia the medieval restrictions on trade and industry were 
abolished and industrial freedom (Gewerbefreiheit) attained in 1810, 
almost half a century previous to the change in the other German 
States. 4 Apprenticeship declined under industrial freedom and ex- 
tensive competition, and the need of supplementary means of training 
was felt. Industrial improvement schools 2 were established, meet- 
ing evenings and Sundays at first, and these struggled on until the 
industrial law of the North German Union in 1869 gave localities the 
right to require compulsory attendance of all male workmen under 18 
years of age. 5 In 1874 the final factor of success was added in annual 
Prussian appropriations and an official statement of principles for the 
conduct of such schools. 

1 Sadler, M. E., editor: Continuation schools in England and Elsewhere. Manchester, 1907, ch. 8, p. 520. 
» See preface. 

3 Spec. con. reps., vol. 33, p. 13. 

< English Bd. of Educ. Educational Pamphlet No. 18. Compulsory Continuation Schools in Germany 
1910, preface. 
» Eng. Bd. Educ. Educ. Pamph. 18, preface, p. 3. 

77 



78 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

The States of central and south Germany, after the establishment 
of the German nation, felt the need of better cultural and civic 
training for their masses. They accordingly established general im- 
provement schools, whose sessions were at first on Sunday and in the 
evenings. 1 Bavaria had had improvement schools with compulsory 
attendance for both boys and girls since 1803. The new schools did 
not succeed very well until the curricula were remodeled to center 
around the vocations of the pupils, 2 and the schools thus became 
primarily industrial schools. They have remained, however, more 
cultural and less technical than the Prussian schools. 

From the early general Sunday and evening schools, and the indus- 
trial Sunday and evening schools which became differentiated from 
them, or were established in the light of their example, arose during 
the nineteenth century a great variety of industrial schools ranging 
from the improvement schools for youthful workers to the highly 
advanced and scientific technical high schools (Technische Hoch- 
schulen). 3 The majority of these industrial schools were established 
by private individuals, guilds, trade-unions, merchants' associa- 
tions, and towns. 4 This fact, and the loosely united condition of the 
German States during most of this development, resulted in great 
diversity in the types of schools and much wasted effort. The nine- 
teenth century was preeminently the period of experimentation in 
industrial schools. After the German nation was founded these 
schools, stimulated by the remarkable industrial and commercial 
development, went forward with leaps and bounds. But they are 
still essentially local in their control and support, and there is not as 
yet a unified system under central control. 5 Indeed, any system of 
industrial schools can be spoken of, as in the title of this chapter, 
only in the most general way, and for lack of a better term to indicate 
their general features and relations. So far as unity exists, it is due 
chiefly to the action of the National and of the State Governments, - 
and to the forces of example and imitation, these latter working 
largely through the association of the German industrial school men 
(Verband deutscher Gewerbeschulmanner) . 6 

All German children are required by law to attend the common 
school (Volkschule) , or an accepted substitute, from the age of 6 or 7 
to that of 14 years. 7 This common school is much like our own, differ- 
ing chiefly in that religion is given a prominent place, and a slight fee 
is charged; it is divided into separate classes, though with equally 
good teachers, for pupils of different pecuniary rank (by charging 
different school fees); and like German schools in general, teaches 
fewer subjects than we do, but these with greater thoroughness. Some 

> Sadler, p. 518. * Ibid., pp. 12-16. 

2 Eng. Bd. Educ.Educ. Pamph. 18, preface, pp. 3, 4. 'Ibid., pp. 15, 134. 

3 Spec. cons, reps., vol. 33, pp. 12-16. 7 With minor exceptions. Ibid., p. 5 
* Ibid., p. 18. 



THE SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 79 

common schools offer prevocational work, such as elementary drawing 
and work in paper, basketry, wood and iron (for boys), sewing and 
cooking (for girls). 1 At his tenth year, the parents of a boy in the 
common school must decide whether he is to continue his schooling 
beyond the compulsory attendance in that school. If so, he will 
leave the common schools at once and enter one of a number of types 
of school which offer themselves. If he is to be classically trained 
(with both Greek and Latin) he will enter the Progymnasium for its 
six-year or the Gymnasium for its nine-year course. If his training 
is to be semiclassical (including Latin, but not Greek), the Realpro- 
gymnasium offers him a six-year, and the Realgymnasium a nine- 
year course. If a liberal or modern training is desired, he will enter 
the Realschule for a six-year or the Ober-realschule for a nine-year 
course. Of these, in turn, all the nine-year courses admit to the ap- 
propriate faculties of the universities and to the technical and com- 
mercial high schools. The six-year courses are largely attended and 
completed, for the reason that their completion (or six years in a nine- 
year school) and the passage of an examination are rewarded by the 
one-year volunteer army certificate, by which the obligation to serve 
two years in the army is commuted to service for one year only, as a 
volunteer and with the chance to become an officer. 2 These courses 
are also prerequisite to entrance into many of the higher schools 
(hohere Schulen) of various sorts, commercial, technical, and engi- 
neering. 

Of distinctly industrial schools there is a great body, with the scien- 
tific technical high schools at the summit. These schools are about 
the equivalent of our best colleges and university departments of 
engineering and other applied sciences. They train the technical 
leaders of industry. In them, probably more than in our universi- 
ties, scientific investigation is given a very important place. Below 
them stand the middle technical and trade schools, of which there are 
many sorts: Mining schools (Bergschulen), building schools (Bauge- 
werkschulen) , textile schools (Textilschulen), schools of machinery 
(Maschinenbauschulen), and other schools for the metal industry, 
industrial art schools (Kunstgewerbliche Schulen), and other lesser 
groups. 3 These middle schools are of two main types, the higher 
and the lower. 

The higher middle technical schools are designed to train leaders 
of industry, but with a less thorough preparation than that offered 
by the technical high schools. As a rule, they require the completion 
of a six-year general course, such as secures the one-year military 
certificate, and at least two years of practical work in the student's 

1 Rep. of the N. J. Commis. on Indus. Educ, 1909, p. 172. 

2 Spec. cons, reps., vol. 33, p. 8. 

• Cf. Gewerbliche Fachschulen in Preussen, hrsg. v. kgl. Landesgewerbeamt, 1909. 



80 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

trade. 1 They are probably the approximate equivalent of our tech- 
nical schools, colleges, and universities of less exacting standards. 
In them about two-thirds of the engineers of Germany are trained, 
only about one-third coming from the technical high schools. 2 

The lower middle technical schools are designed chiefly for the train- 
ing of practical working master tradesmen, technicians of lower grade, 
for supplementary training of foremen (who generally rise from the 
ranks), and the like. They require for entrance several years prac- 
tice of the trade to be studied and throughout their work emphasize 
the practical side. In Prussia, the technical middle schools, higher 
and lower, are more fully developed than in south Germany. The 
industrial art schools are a special type, in that they train those 
engaged in many different trades and industries in the application 
of art and of design to their several trades. 

Of all those engaged in industry, only a small. minority attend any 
of the above-mentioned schools. Nor in these schools do we find 
such great differences from our own technical schools of various 
grades. It is in the industrial schools for the masses of workers that 
Germany excels and with respect to these schools that we have most 
to learn from her. These, the lower industrial schools, are of two 
main sorts, day trade schools and improvement schools. The rela- 
tions of some of these schools to each other and to other schools are 
often exceedingly close. They may use the same building, have the 
same teachers, and the same management and support. Where 
there are but few workshop facilities available, or where the improve- 
ment schools utilize workshops also, instruction in the lower trade 
schools may differ but little from that of the improvement schools, 
except as to length. But throughout Germany the attendance at 
day trade schools is but a fraction of that at improvement schools. 
This is because few boys who go into industry as ordinary workmen 
can afford to study so long without earning, and because there is 
ordinarily no necessity for so doing by reason of the training to be 
received as an apprentice and in industrial improvement schools. 
There is also, as we shall see, serious question by many employers 
in industry as to the advisability of such schools for the training of 
the rank and file of workers. As a general rule, these lower day trade 
schools for workmen do not constitute substitutes for apprenticeship ; 
but a few such schools, according to Dr. Kerschensteiner, for wrought- 
iron workers, machine builders, joiners, weavers, :plumbers, etc., 
do take the place of apprenticeship. 3 

The type of school which supplies the great bulk of the training of 
the mass of workers, supplementary to the training derived from their 

1 Kerschensteiner, Georg. Three Lectures on Vocational Training; delivered in America under the 
auspices of the Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ, 1911, p. 39. 

2 Spec. cons, reps., v. 33, p. 277. 

3 Kerschensteiner: Three Lectures, etc., p. 33. 



THE SYSTEM OF INDUSTEIAL SCHOOLS. 81 

work itself, is the industrial improvement school (gewerbliche Fort- 
bildungssclmle). In this school the majority of workers receive 
their first and only industrial training imparted by any school. Ger- 
man improvement schools are now of three forms: General, industrial, 
and commercial (allgemeine, gewerbliche, and kaufmannische). 
These schools, as we have seen above, 1 were originally all general 
schools and of a type which aimed merely to continue and perhaps 
slightly expand the common school training. Such schools are now 
becoming a less and less important part of all Fortbildungsschulen 
and are also adding new subjects to their curricula, as civics, hygiene, 
studies of transportation, etc. Their organization varies from place 
to place. In some important cities there is no such school, and such 
few general classes as are held are a part of the industrial improve- 
ment school. The recent great growth of the industrial schools is a 
striking fact. Those youths engaged in industry attend the industrial, 
and those in commerce, the commercial improvement school; whether 
attendance is compulsory or voluntary, youths naturally attend the 
schools organized for their type of occupation. 

The relative importance of day trade schools, of improvement 
schools, and of the various types of improvement schools, is indicated 
by the following figures. There were in Germany, in 1906, about 
130,000 pupils in general improvement schools; 206,000 in industrial 
improvement schools (including some called trade improvement 
schools — fachliche Fortbildungsschulen) ; 40,000 in (day) trade 
schools; 53,000 in commercial schools; 67,000 in agricultural schools; 
71,000 in girls' general continuation schools; and 23,000 in girls' 
trade schools. 2 

By the National Industrial Law, established in 1891, compulsory 
attendance was provided for. and the improvement schools thus 
greatly prospered. This law provides as follows: 

The undertakers of industry must allow to their workers under 18 years of age who 
attend an institution for instruction recognized by the community authorities or by 
the State as an improvement school the necessary time for this purpose, as specified 
by the appropriate authorities. The instruction may be on Sunday only when the 
hours of instruction are so set that the pupils are not hindred by them from attending 
the chief religious service, or a service of their confession especially established for 
them with the consent of the religious authorities. * * * Institutions in which 
instruction in woman 's hand and house work is given are improvement schools in the 
intention of these regulations. 

A community or a wider union of communities (Kommunalverbandes) may, by 
national statutory regulations, so far as regulations are not established by the separate 
States, require the attendance at an improvement school of male workers under 18 
years, as well as of female commercial clerks (Handlungsgehilfen) and female appren- 
tices under 18 years. In the same manner the necessary regulations may be made for 
the enforcing of this obligation. In special, regulations may be made by statutory 

1 Kerschensteiner: Three Lectures, etc., pp. 1-3. 2 SadLr: Continuation Schools, ch. 18, table ii. 

88740°— 13 6 



82 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

provisions to insure a regular school attendance, as well as to regulate the duties of 
parents, guardians, and employers; these regulations and suitable deportment may- 
be enforced in the improvement school. Those individuals are freed from the statutory- 
obligation to attend an improvement school who attend a guild or other improvement 
or trade school, so far as the instruction of these schools is recognized by the higher 
administrative authorities as an adequate substitute for that of the general improve- 
ment schools. 1 

The several German States have reserved to themselves the full 
regulation of their school affairs and so the above national law has 
no compulsory force and is permissive only. 2 Great results have, 
notwithstanding, followed it; for in those States which have no law 
regulating improvement schools the national law, in conjunction 
with local ordinances, has in many localities provided compulsory 
attendance. The national law, and the compulsory attendance pro- 
vided under it for some schools, has also served as an example to the 
States, and has stimulated them also to legislate for compulsory 
attendance. On the basis of the national law and local ordinance, 
where such local ordinance exists, employers must allow time for the 
school attendance even of those workers who attend voluntarily. 3 
The national law further provides that in localities where a trade 
school recognized by the State or communal authorities exists the 
obligation of the employer to insure time to his youthful workers to 
attend a school recognized as an improvement school (as sec. 120 
above) applies to such trade schools also. 4 The manager (Geschafts- 
inhaber) must hold his apprentices and journeymen under 18 years 
to attendance on the improvement and trade schools and must watch 
over their attendance. These provisions (in sees. 120 and 139c) are 
enforceable against employers or parents by fine of not to exceed 
20 marks ($4.80), or in case of inability to pay, by imprisonment, not 
to exceed three days for each infringement. 5 

Almost all the States have legislated on the subject of the improve- 
ment schools, and their main requirements in 1909 are set forth in 
the accompanying table. 

i R. G. O., sec. 120, pp. 380-384. 

» Baar, Ewald: Die deutsche Fortbildungsschule im Jahre 1909, p. U 

3 R. G. O., sec. 120, notes, p. 382. (Hoffman edition.) 

* Ibid., sec. 139i, pp. 4S2-3. 

s Ibid., sec. 150, 4. pp. 503-4. 



THE SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 83 

German State laws on compulsory attendance at improvement schools (1909). 1 



States, with approxi- 
mate population (1905). 



Prussia 2 

(37,000,000). 



Bavaria 

(6,500,000). 



Saxony 

(4,500,000.) 



Wurttemberg . 
(2,300,000) 



Baden 

(2,000,000) 



Hesse 

(1,200,000) 



Meeklenburg-Schwerin * . 
(625,000) 



Mecklenburg-Strelitz * 
(103,000) 



Saxe-Weimar. 
(388,000) 



Oldenburg 4 . 
(438,000) 

Brunswick 4 . 
(485,000) 



Saxe-Meiningen . 
(269,000.) 

Saxe-Altenburg. 
(206,000.) 



Minimum attendance Minimum attendance 
compulsory for boys. compulsory for girls. 



For 3 years, 2 or 3 hours 
a week, in Sunday 
school; or in improve- 
ment school, where 
the community so 
chooses. 

For 3 years, 2 or 3 hours 
a week. 



For 2 years, 2 hours a 
week, 40 weeks a year. 
If community be ex- 
cused from establish- 
ment of an improve- 
ment school, then 3 
years in Sunday 
school. 



For 2 years, 2 hours a 
week. 



For 3 years, 4 hours a 
week, 4 or 5 months. 



In cities for handworker 
apprentices, through 
their apprenticeship. 



For 2 years, twice a 
week at least in 
winter; not over 6 
hours a week. 



For 2 years, 4 hours a 
week. 

For 2 years; full year, 2 
hours a week, or 4 or 
5 months, 4 hours a 
week. 



Same as for boys. 



Only by community 
action; then not over 
2 years. 

Same as for boys 



For 1 year. 



A community may es- 
tablish an improve- 
ment school for girls. 



A community may re- 
quire attendance for 
2 years up to 6 hours 
a week. 



Same as for boys . 



A community may es- 
lish an improve- 
ment school for girls. 



Remarks. 



In Posen and West 
Prussia, the minister 
of commerce and in- 
dustry may make at- 
tendance compulsory. 



Every community with 
40 boys under 18 years 
in commerce and in- 
dustry, must establish 
an industrial improve- 
ment school, and such 
boys must attend it 
for 3 years, 280 hours a 
year (may be 4 years 
for special trades). 

A community may re- 
quire compulsory at- 
tendance of both sexes 
through their 18th 
year at industrial or 
commercial school. 



Industrial schools to 
have courses for 3 
years or more, 8 hours 
a week. 



Attandance th r o u g h 
compulsory term in 
which 18th birthday 
is reached. Compul- 
sion may be estab- 
lished by the State, 
for improvement 
schools not public in- 
stitutions, and single 
groups of industries, 
on motion of those 
concerned. 



•Compiled from data in Baar, pp. 3-82. 

'No law, except for miners. National industrial law thus in force for miners (sees. 120, 139i, 142, 150). 
Section 120 permits localities to require attendance. 
3 State approval necessary to establishment of local compulsion. 
* Law reiterates national industrial law. 
'No law. National industrial law thus in force. 



84 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

German State laws on compulsory attendance at improvement schools (1909) — Continued. 



States, with approxi- 
mate population (1905). 



Minimum attendance 
compulsory for boys. 



Minimum attendance 
compulsory for girls. 



Remarks. 



Saxe-Coburg-Gotha . 
(242,000.) 



Anhalti 

(328,000.) 

Schwartzburg - Sonders- 
hausen. 
(85,000.) 



Schwarzburg - R u d o 
stadt. J 
(97,000.) 



Coburg: For 2 years, 
winter months, 2 
hours a week. Sach- 
sen - Gotha: For 3 
years, 2 hours a week 
through the year, or 
4 hours a week for 4 
or 5 months. 



Coburg: A community 
may require compul- 
sory attendance for 2 
years. Sachsen-Go- 
tha: A community 
may require compul- 
sory attendance. 



For 2 years, 4 hours a 
week (in special cases, 
2 hours), 4 to 6 
months. 



A community may es- 
tablish an improve- 
ment school for girls 
and require attend- 
a n c e (compulsion 
may be limited to 
those in industry). 



Reusz (senior line ') . 
(70,000.) 

Reusz, (junior line) . 
(145,000.) 



If superior school au- 
thorities so decide, 
for 2 years, 2 hours a 
week through the 
year, or 4 hours a 
week for 6 months. 



A community may es- 
tablish an improve- 
ment school for girls. 



Lippe' 

(145,000.) 

Schaumburg-Lippe s 
(45,000.) 



Waldeck.. 
(59,000.) 



Lfibeck 

(106,000.) 



Bremen 

(263,000. ) 



For 2 years, 4 hours a 
week. 

For all app rentices 
through their appren- 
ticeship; all the year 8 
hours a week, or win- 
ter months alone 12 
hours a week. For 
commercial appren- 
tices and clerks 
through their eight- 
eenth year. 

For 3 years (no mini- 
mum; 4 to 6 hours a 
week maximum); un- 
skilled workers ex- 
cepted. 



Hamburg 8 

(875,000.) 

Alsace-Lorraine 3 . 
(1,810,000.) 



Similar to law of Prus- 
sia. 



A community may re- 
quire attendance for 2 
or 3 years. 



i No law except for miners; national industrial law thus in force for miners (sees. 120, 139/, 142, 150). 
Section 120 permits localities to require attendance. 

2 Law reiterates national industrial law. 

3 No law. National industrial law thus in force. 

Where no law on the subject exists the provisions of the National 
Industrial Law, as stated above, permit compulsory attendance to be 
required by any community wishing it. Some States have reiterated 
the substance of the permission of the national law. Bavaria, Sax- 
ony, Wurttemberg, Baden, Hesse, Saxe-Weimar, Saxe-Meiningen, 
Saxe-Altenburg, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, 



THE SYSTEM OF INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 85 

and Waldeck require all boys in industry or commerce, and not other- 
wise as well educated, to attend improvement school (in some few 
cases Sunday schools) for two to three years after their compulsory 
attendance at common school has ended; Mecklenburg-Schwerin, 
Reuss Jungere Linie, Lubeck, and Bremen make similar but variously 
qualified requirements. Only a few States require girls to attend 
improvement (or Sunday) schools — Bavaria, Wurttemberg, Baden, 
and Saxe-Meiningen (Sadler says also Waldeck and parts of Prussia). 1 
As a rule, the compulsion is for attendance on a general improvement 
school, though sometimes on an industrial or commercial school. 
Those are excepted from the requirement who are receiving at least 
an equivalent education otherwise. Attendance at a school approved 
as a substitute for the improvement school frees ordinarily from the 
obligation to attend that school. For a summarized statement of 
the extent of improvement schools let us take that of Dr. Kerschen- 
steiner: 

In south Germany there is no city or town, however small, without one such school 
at least for all boys. In north Germany the great industrial town of Essen is the only 
larger town in which such a school is wanting. 2 

The industrial improvement schools are generally not to be called 
trade schools. 3 Few of them, the country through, have many work- 
shops, and none or practically none of them attempt to act as substi- 
tutes for apprenticeship. They are technical schools, seeking to 
impart the "why" and "how" of the trades, or part technical, part 
general schools. We shall see more fully in the succeeding chapters 
of what nature these schools are and what results they are accom- 
plishing. Throughout, let it not be forgotten that these schools 
merely supplement, and aim merely to supplement, the training 
received in apprenticeship, even though this service be highly 
important. 

After the industrial schools of various types had been established 
the State followed the example of the individuals and groups who had 
founded them and founded or aided in the founding of similar schools 
and obtained year by year more and more control over all these 
schools. This was largely done by means of providing subsidies for 
the industrial schools, to obtain which they must meet certain require- 
ments with regard to grade and kind of work and the like, and submit 
to certain supervision. Inspectors enforce the State requirements. 
Thus the State tends to unify and standardize these schools, as well 
as to add greatly to their available funds. Certain modes of support 
are typical, though particular arrangements vary greatly from place 

i Sadler, eh. 18, p. 517. 

' Kerschensteiner: Three Lectures, etc., p. 9. Essen has had a voluntary industrial improvement school 
since 1845. In 1910, at request of the guilds, this was made a compulsory school. 
3 Certainly not in the American sense of the term; see preface. 



86 GERMAN" INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

to place and school to school. Distinctly local schools are usually 
supported chiefly by the community with aid from State subsidies 
(except, usually, in case of improvement schools), while guilds, asso- 
ciations, and unions often contribute lesser amounts (though in some 
cases a large share). The higher schools receive usually large State 
support on account of their service to a wide district. The boards of 
directors include in most cases representatives of the industries con- 
cerned, or some of them (usually guild members), city officials, and 
representatives of any other contributors. 

The State administration and supervision has been vested both 
under departments or ministries of education and those for commerce 
and industry. The result of many experiments and repeated changes 
is in most cases the supervision of the industrial schools by a different 
body from that set over the other schools and one representing the 
interests of industry. Only thus, it was found, could the indus- 
trial schools be kept from becoming academic, true to their name and 
purpose, and be made practical and adjusted to the changing needs 
of industry. Cooperation, in the form of assistance and advice, of 
the educational authorities was found essential, however, to efficient 
operation of the schools, and this is now usual. 1 

Industrial schools for girls and women are still greatly lacking. 
Housekeeping schools and schools training for women's industries, as 
millinery, dressmaking, etc., and for domestic service, are found in 
many places. Commercial schools are one of the most numerous 
classes of schools for girls, while general improvement schools exist 
in many places. The present tendencies toward more improvement 
schools for girls are directed more toward the establishment of com- 
mercial than of industrial schools. There is probably to-day greater 
need in Germany for industrial schools for girls and appropriate com- 
pulsory attendance on them than for any other advance in industrial 
education. 

i Spec. cons, reps., vol. 33, pp. 137, 138; Rep. N. J. Commis. Indus. Educ, p. 175; Baar, pp. 3-82. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF HAMBURG. 

Hamburg, a city of some 802,000 population (1905) and one of 
the chief ports of the world, is situated near the mouth of the Elbe 
River. Originally a member of the Hanse union, the city is now 
one of the constitutent States of the Empire, as the proud name 
of freie und Hansa Stadt Hamburg gives evidence. Primarily com- 
mercial, and, because of its location and tariff-free portion of the 
harbor, a great port for transshipment; it is now beginning also to 
see the growth of a thriving industrial life. The chief groups of 
industries, with approximate numbers of workers engaged in each, 
are: Machine industries (22,000); foodstuffs (8,900); metal working 
(6,700) (machine and metal working industries include about 10,000 
engaged in shipbuilding); wood working (6,600); clothing (5,800); 
book printing and type casting (4,400) ; leather (4,200) ; fine lingerie 
(2,900); cleaning industries (2,900); forest products, fats, soaps, 
oils, etc. (2,700); building (2,500); chemical industries (2,200); 
painting, lacquering, etc. (2,000).* 

Until recent years there were a number of guild industrial schools 
in Hamburg, and a few of these still survive, the guilds concerned 
requiring and enforcing the attendance of the apprentices under 
them. But for the most part, as the city has extended its activities 
in the field of industrial education, the guild schools have been 
taken over by the city and now constitute a part of the public 
system of industrial schools. This change has been satisfactory to 
the guilds as to all others concerned. 2 

The chamber of industry was established in 1903 and still con- 
tinues theoretical master courses (Meister-kurse). 3 There were in 
1910 13 such courses for different industries and groups, each includ- 
ing about 30 independent handworkers and journeymen (who must 
be 24 years old). The purpose of these courses in the improvement 
of handworkers in general, and especially the preparation of young 
handworkers for the master's examination (Meisterprufung) . The 
courses meet ordinarily week-day evenings from 8 to 10 o'clock, and 
the whole course includes at least 40 hours of class work. The 
teachers are taken from higher schools, and thus are above the 
ordinary grade. They are assigned classes in related industries so 

1 Total 84,374. Yahresbericht der Hamburgischen Gewerbekammer fur 1910, pp. 76-81. 

Dr. Rudolf Gornandt, a director of the Hamburg Gewerbekammer. 
* Yahresbericht Gewerbekammer, 1910. Anhang, pp. 6-40. 

87 



88 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

far as possible, that each may adapt himself to the special needs of 
that group of industries. The subjects treated are industrial book- 
keeping, notes, bills of exchange, etc. (Wechseellehre), industrial 
calculation (of costs, etc.), and law (the chief provisions of the in- 
dustrial law, of the industrial insurance laws, of the law of associa- 
tions, and of other laws especially applicable to handworkers). The 
attendance on these courses in 1910 was 390, from 15 different 
industries (with only 4 per cent of absences). 1 

Since 1906 the chamber of industry has established also practical 
master courses. 2 The purpose of these courses is not the training 
of journeymen to become masters, nor any elementary training at 
all, but rather the education and practice of masters in the latest 
developments in their respective industries. This includes training 
in the use and desirability of the most modern machines, simple 
investigations of materials, technical, scientific, and industrial art 
lectures and practice to give an up-to-date viewpoint, and the like. 
There were 25 courses for 14 industries in 1910. A few titles of 
classes are: Concrete construction (2 classes), investigation of baker's 
materials, large scale production of shoes, automatic welding and 
cutting of metals (4 classes). These classes usually meet Sunday 
morning from 8 to 12, or week-day evenings from 6 to 11. The 
total number of class hours averages about 32 for each course. The 
teachers are engineers, architects, chemists, painters, and other 
experts. The attendance in 1910 was 295, the men ranging in age 
from 25 to 60, and averaging perhaps 35 to 42 years. 8 The interest 
of the participants was very great, promising important results on 
industry. 

The city of Hamburg has what may truly be called a system of 
industrial schools, fairly comprehensive in its scope. It includes 
the following: 

(1) A building trades school (Baugewerkschule) with department 
for underground construction. 

(2) A technikum or technical school, including (a) a higher machine 
builder's school (hohere Maschinenbauschule), (b) a higher school for 
construction of ship machines (hohere Schule fur Schiffsmaschineri- 
bau), (c) a higher shipbuilder's school (hohere Schiffbau schule), (d) 
a higher electrical school (hohere Schule fur Elektrotechnik), and (e) 
a school for ship's engineers (Schiff ingenieurschule) . 

(3) An industrial art school (Kunstgewerbeschule) . 

1 The courses cost about 4,108.77 marks ($986.34), of which about half (2,057 m.) came from fees of 5 
marks per participant. Yahrebericht Gewerbekammer, 1910, Anhang, p. 39. 

2 Yahresbericht Gewerbekammer, 1910, Anhang, pp. 41-74. 

» The total cost in 1910 was 14,248.79 marks ($3,419.67), of which 2,114 marks ($507.36) was met by fees. 
The balance was paid by the chamber of industry from funds furnished by the city for the promotion of 
industry. The average costs (in excess of fees) were: For each course, $116.49; for each participant, 
$9.87; for each class hour, $3.65. Yahresbericht Gewerbekammer, 1910, Anhang, p. 73, 74. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF HAMBUBQ, 89 

(4) A wagon builders' school (Wagenbauschule) . 

(5) A day industrial school. 

(6) Eleven evening and Sunday industrial schools. 

(7) Eight commercial improvement schools. 

(8) An improvement school for girl and women clerks. 

I visited all of the above schools except the last 2, and including 2 
of the 11 evening and Sunday schools. 

The building trades school is a day technical school of middle grade, 
preparing the graduates of its two and one-half year courses for tech- 
nical positions, or in connection with practical training, for positions 
as master builders. It has no shops; drawing, mathematics, and 
design are prominent in its curricula. Many of its students attend 
only during the winter half year, working at their trade during the 
summer, as shown by the attendance of 146 students in summer term 
1909, but 405 in the winter term of 1909-10. 1 

The technikum is a type of the middle technical schools which 
train about two- thirds of the German engineers. 2 For entrance 3 the 
military volunteer certificate must be possessed, involving the com- 
pletion of six years' work in a secondary school, 4 and two years of 
practical work; or certain other equivalents. The subjects taught 
are similar to those in technical colleges in the United States. The 
courses last but two years; but since the students are allowed only 
the short vacations usual in industry, since they have all had prac- 
tical experience, and thus are given no shopwork, and since their 
practical training enables them to grasp the theoretical with the 
minimum of difficulty, this period proves sufficient to turn out well- 
equipped men. During the school year 1909-10 an average of 326 
students attended the technikum. The cost of this school to the 
city, on account of the high salaries of the necessarily very well- 
equipped teachers, is the greatest of all the city schools. 5 The grad- 
uates are quite uniformly able to secure good positions. 

The industrial art school seeks, in its day classes, to train in draw- 
ing, painting, sculpturing, and the like, and in industrial design, 
primarily those persons engaged in industry who have completed 
their apprenticeship, and also apprentices. There are both day and 
evening classes. Some classes adapted to special trades are those in 
interior architecture, glass painting, etching, bookbinding, photo- 
graphy, embroidery, and weaving. Much of the students' work was 
excellent, especially the artistic hand bookbinding. That it is prac- 
tical is attested by their ability to secure good positions. 

1 Programm der Staatlichen Baugewerkschule fur Hochbau und Tiefbau zu Hamburg; and Bericht fiber das 
Schulyahr 1909-10. 

8 Staatliches Technikum Hamburg: Programm; and Bericht ilber das Schulyahr 1909-10. 

s Except for the Ship Engineer's School. 

<Cf. ch. 8, p. 79. 

6 $500 to $600 per student per year. Herr Proben, Technikum. 



90 GERMAN" INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

The wagon builder's school is a small day school, in which about a 
score of journeymen and master wagon builders receive technical 
instruction for a year each. They are thus enabled to become 
designers, masters, and foremen. The trade instruction is imparted 
by a master wagon builder; while instructors not masters in the 
trade teach free-hand drawing and other less specialized subjects. 
The school has now been in existence for 25 years, and according to 
Herr Behncke, its head teacher, is so successful that in the fall of 1911 
a similar school for smiths was to be opened. 1 

The day industrial school and chief Sunday and evening industrial 
school occupy the same large building, centrally located, where are 
also the technikum, building trades school, and industrial art museum 
Classes are held during the daytime, evenings, and Sunday morning. 
These two schools consist of 14 trade schools for 20 trades, attendance 
at which is compulsory for apprentices of guild members, and of 
classes for voluntary attendance. The trade schools, in the winter 
term 1909-10, included 2,381 students, chiefly apprentices, while the 
voluntary classes included 1,618 students (1,186 apprentices, 287 jour- 
neymen, and 145 others). The subjects taught are almost all techni- 
cal, and there are but few workshops. Trade drawing is taught sepa- 
rately for 17 trades, and similar specialization of other subjects is the 
rule. The number of hours of instruction per week varies from 5J to 
over 9 for voluntary pupils, and 3 to 18 (the latter for painters and lac- 
querers), with an average of about 8 for the compulsory trade schools. 2 

The so-called small industrial schools are scattered through the 
city in 10 common-school buildings. 3 They include evening and 
Sunday schools with special courses for the several trades; appren- 
tice trade schools, attendance on which is enforced on their appren- 
tices by guilds and guild members concerned; and incidentally, 
classes for common-school boys in free-hand geometrical and pro- 
jective drawing. A total of 3,560 pupils attend all these schools 
(winter, 1909-10). Only apprentices and other youthful workers are 
accepted as pupils, except in the drawing classes for school boys. 

The evening and Sunday schools are attended voluntarily and 
offer six hours of instruction weekly, from 7 to 9 one evening a week, 
and from 8.30 to 12.30 Sunday morning. The subjects offered are: 
German, arithmetic, bookkeeping and law, writing, study of geo- 
metrical forms, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, free-hand drawing, 
geometrical drawing and projection, and trade drawing for builders, 
machine builders, electricians, wrought-iron workers (Schlosser) *, 

1 Lehrplan der Staatlichen Wagenbauschule zu Hamburg; and Lehrplan der Deutschen Schmiedeschule zu 
Hamburg. 

2 Staatliche Hauptgewerbeschule, Tagesgewerbeschule, und Wagenbauschule zu Hamburg. Bericht, 1909-Wa. 
8 Staatliche Gewerbeschulen Bismarkstrasse usw. zu Hamburg. Bericht, 1909-10. 

* A hard word to translate. Not "locksmith" as ordinarily rendered, but representing one engaged in a 
roughly denned range of operations, between the smith and the machinist, concerned perhaps as much 
with wrought-iron as with anything else. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OP HAMBURG. 



91 



plumbers, and machinists. What these smaller schools lack, their 
pupils can supplement by added work in the chief industrial schools 
(161 did so in 1909-10). 

The trade schools, like those in the chief industrial school, have 
been established only when the cooperation of the chamber of industry 
and of the guild or guilds concerned could be secured. The school 
authorities and the guilds agreed on a curriculum, and the guilds 
enforce attendance of their apprentices throughout their apprentice- 
ship, being aided in this by the chamber of industry. 1 Eight hours 
of instruction are given weekly; four hours on Sunday morning, and 
four hours on two evenings from 6 to 8 (for wrought-iron workers) , 
or on one afternoon from 3 to 7 (for plumbers). There are two of 
these schools, one for wrought-iron workers (Schlosser) including 447 
pupils (in winter 1909-10) in four different buildings, and one for 
plumbers and related trades, having 686 pupils in the one building. 
The subjects taught in the ironworkers' school are drawing, study 
of industry (Gewerbekunde), arithmetic, business composition, book- 
keeping, and civics (Biirgerkunde), all taught with special reference 
to the trade. 

The curriculum of the apprentice trade school of the plumbers and 
related trades, which is typical of that of the other trade schools, 
includes four years of work, so arranged, however, as to meet the 
needs of those who complete apprenticeship in three years and thus 
may no longer be required to attend. The scheme is as follows: 



Curriculum of the apprentice trade school of the plumbers and related trades 






Number of hours weekly. 


Subjects. 


First 
year. 


Second 
year. 


Third 
year. 


Fourth 
year. 




4 
1 
2 
1 


4 
1 
2 

1 


4 

2 

1 
1 


5 




1 




1 




1 























The drawing so prominent in the course includes geometrical 
drawing and projection the first year, and after that trade drawing 
exclusively. The study of industry includes a great variety of data 
calculated to orient the apprentice in his work and general place in 
life, such as materials, processes, systems of installation of gas, water, 
electricity, etc., and a little industrial law. The industrial arith- 
metic is entirely concerned with practical problems, as the reckon- 
ing of wages, costs of industrial insurance, cost estimates, and final 
reckoning of costs, purchase of materials, notes, and exchange. 

1 The Hamburg Gewerbekammer, unlike most in Germany, supervises factories as well as handwork- 
industries. 



92 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

Business composition gives practice in writing letters or forms for 
various business purposes, in which the practical end is given first 
place. The bookkeeping includes a little cost accounting. Finally, 
the civics class adds a little to the minimum data on industrial law 
and the like in the study of industry, in familiarizing the apprentices 
with certain laws, branches of government, industrial and public 
duties. There are no workshops in this school, though numerous 
models aid in its instruction. 1 

The instruction is partly by professional teachers, partly by masters 
in the trades concerned. The latter give all the trade drawing. The 
teachers are paid only 3 marks (72 cents) per hour class in the day- 
time, and twice this amount in the evening. 

Attendance on any of these schools is not compulsory by either 
State or other public authority. Attempts to require attendance 
by State action have so far 2 failed. According to section 120 of the 
National Industrial Law, 3 and a State law of Hamburg of October 7, 
1864, all employers are required to allow their apprentices to attend 
an industrial school at least six hours a week, if they wish to do so. 
These laws are not of much force and have but little effect on the 
attendance. At most they but require the employer to free his 
apprentices from other duties one evening and Sunday morning, which 
most would do in any case. Compulsory attendance in Hamburg, 
so far as it exists, depends solely on guild action, spurred on by the 
chamber of industry. 

About 70 per cent of the Hamburg guilds are compulsory.* These 
guilds require all their apprentices to attend the evening and Sunday 
or other industrial schools throughout their apprenticeship, or so 
long as the course lasts. This compulsion is effectively enforced 
through the several masters, members of the guilds in question, by 
means of fines imposed by the guild on masters whose apprentices 
are irregular in attendance or fail to attend the school. The chamber 
of industry has also exerted pressure on negligent masters success- 
fully. The voluntary guilds seek likewise to enforce attendance in 
their respective industries, but can do so only for their own members. 
Industrial enterprises aggregating over 35,000 masters and workers 
have no manner of compulsion on attendance of their apprentices. 5 
This is the weak spot of the system, and one that will probably be 
changed in time in favor of city (State) compulsion. 

i This curriculum was obtained from a manuscript furnished by Herr Schulinspektor August Kasten. 
The school to which it refers was inspected in many classes by the author, under his guidance. 

2 Latest data, 1911. 

3 Cf. ch. 8, p. 82. 

* In 1910 there were 8,694 masters and 34,116 masters and workers together in and under compulsory 
guilds; 1,336 masters and 14,691 masters and workers together in and under free guilds. Gewerbekammer 
Yahresbericht, 1910, p. 65. 

* Gewerbekammer Yahresbericht, 1910; worked out from figures on pp. 65, 81. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF HAMBURG. 93 

Some of those apprentices and other youthful workers not required 
to attend do so voluntarily. Thus the machine builders' guild is 
free, but every apprentice in this trade attends the evening industrial 
school, because the mechanical drawing there taught is absolutely 
necessary to him in his work. Another incentive to voluntary 
attendance on these schools is the need of the apprentices for the 
training there received, if they are to pass the journeyman's exami- 
nation, or later the master's examination. These examinations, 
which are both practical and theoretical, can in most cases be passed 
only by those apprentices and journeymen who have attended these 
schools. In 1910, 483 apprentices passed the journeyman's exami- 
nation and 167 journeymen the master's examination. 1 

Most apprentices in Hamburg attend an industrial school volun- 
tarily or otherwise; so there can hardly be said to be a special demand 
for their students. The employers are able to obtain a larger number 
of skilled workers than if there were no industrial schools in the city. 
The skilled workers available for industrial purposes are steadily 
increasing in numbers, and in those industries where skill is demanded 
a steadily growing proportion of workers is found who have passed 
the master's examination. 2 The industrial schools are found to 
stimulate the interest of the boys in their work. The chamber of 
industry states of the iron workers' classes that they have had a very 
beneficial influence on the journeyman's examination piece, 3 which 
indicates principally practical, but also theoretical, ability. This 
influence was probably exerted chiefly through the drawing classes. 

School products are very seldom sold, both because not much 
work is produced, which is of such sort and quality as to be readily 
marketable, and because the schools have no selling facilities. Even 
where these conditions are absent, the schools would sell but few 
products for fear of competing with and antagonizing the guilds. 

None of these schools unduly increase the number entering a given 
industry, because none of them accept students who have not worked 
in the industry in question or are not at the time so working. Teachers 
who attend these schools as students and school boys in preliminary 
classes are excepted from this rule. The schools do not shorten the 
period of apprenticeship, for this is determined by the chamber of 
industry for all trades, according to the national industrial law on 
apprenticeship. The usual period of apprenticeship in Hamburg 
is four years. A shorter period is allowed in any individual case 
only by permission of the chamber of industry and usually on the 
payment by the apprentice to his employer of a specified sum instead 
of wages being paid him. This payment is made because the employ- 

1 Gewerbekammer Yahresbericht, 1910; worked out from figures on pp. 61, 62. 

2 Dr. Gornandt, Gewerbekammer. 

3 Gewerkekammer Yahresbericht, 1910. Anhang, p. 5. 



94 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

ers say the boy is not worth much the first two or three years and 
that their profit occurs chiefly in his last (usually fourth) year of 
service. Thus the monetary difference to the boy may be in a typical 
case equal to two and a half (or three) marks a week foregone the 
first year, three (or four) the second, and four (or five) the third, or 
475 (or 600) marks total, plus 150 marks paid to the master, or 625 
(or 750) marks total ($150 or $180).* Such shortening of apprentice- 
ship usually occurs in the case of a boy whose parents have money 
enough to advance him thus more rapidly, especially if he has con- 
tinued in school beyond the common school. 

All classes of people in Hamburg are, as a whole, favorable to the 
industrial schools; teachers and directors of the regular schools, 
employers and guilds, unions and workmen, parents and pupils. 
The parents of all classes are most heartily in favor of them, and it is 
from the parents that the greatest demand for their establishment 
has come. Not all individual employers are favorable, but as a class 
they are so in each trade and in all trades collectively. The con- 
sensus of opinion in the entire city is decidedly favorable to the 
industrial schools. 

Their expense is not felt as a heavy burden by the taxpayers, but 
as money well spent, though the schools are expensive. The city 
(State) pays all the expenses of these schools, outside of the small 
sums received for tuition from pupils. The evening and Sunday 
schools require 10 marks ($2.40) tuition a half year, the higher schools 
naturally more (the technikum 72 marks ($17.28) a half year). 
Neither guilds nor employers aid the schools financially; nor do they 
supply materials or models, as in some other German cities. In 
some cases individual masters serve without pay on the school boards. 

The modern tendency to specialization in all industries, with its 
resulting narrowing shop training, is met in some degree by the 
industrial schools in this manner: The schools teach somewhat of all 
branches of each trade in the school for that trade, attended by all 
apprentices who learn but a branch of the trade in their work. Thus 
they are prepared to understand and later supervise work involving 
all the branches, even though they be skilled in but a single branch. 

In those industries where success depends most largely on the 
technical training, as in those where the artistic element enters 
largely (decorating, cabinetmaking, etc.), the employers are most 
decidedly in favor of industrial schools, and are willing to release their 
apprentices to attend them in the daytime, during working hours, 
considering the sacrifice Weil worth while, in view of the greater skill 
secured. In the most highly organized industries, however, such as 
shipbuilding (even though in some of these, as machine and ship 
building, industrial education such as provided in these schools is of 

1 Heir Schulinspektor A. Kasten. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF HAMBURG. 95 

great value) the employers are as yet usually unwilling to release 
their apprentices during working hours to attend industrial school. 
They claim that this disorganizes their factories too much, and that 
the result is thus not worth the sacrifice. 

In the handwork industries also, wherever the benefit from indus- 
trial education is not great (chiefly the less skilled handwork), the 
employers usually consider the sacrifice not worth while and are 
unwilling to release their apprentices to attend industrial school 
during working hours. To sum up, the upper and lower grades of 
industries, in point of skill required and complexity of organization, 
desire industrial education for their apprentices, but, in the main, 
only during the apprentice's own time, while the middle grades 
(including some in the highest grade of skill, but not highest in 
organization) desire this education for their apprentices enough to 
release them for it during working hours, when they can receive it to 
the best advantage. 

To look back over Hamburg's industrial schools, we see that she 
has excellent higher schools, and good lower schools. These lower 
schools are well adapted to the needs of industry, but greatly need 
the requirement of compulsory attendance to enable them both to 
reach the minority, at present neglected, and to require daylight 
attendance in all possible classes. Compulsory attendance, accepted 
and successful through large portions of Germany, will probably in 
time be adopted also in Hamburg, and will add to the efficiency of 
her already good system of industrial schools. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF BERLIN. 

Berlin, the capital of the German Empire, had in 1905 a popula- 
tion of about two millions, which in 1912 had been increased by the 
annexation of suburbs to three and one-half millions. The city is 
thoroughly modern and cosmopolitan. Over half of her population 
are engaged in industries embracing almost all branches. Among 
these the metal-working industries are very important, especially 
the manufacture of machinery and electrical goods. The breweries 
rival those of Munich in extent. 

The city possesses an elaborate system of industrial schools, many 
of them having attained their present form in comparatively recent 
years. In 1905 the administration of all the industrial and improve- 
ment schools was placed under a newly established commission for 
the city trade and improvement schools. 1 The city system of indus- 
trial schools includes: (1) Voluntary improvement schools (chiefly 
commercial); (2) compulsory improvement schools; (3) trade schools 
for apprentices; and (4) middle (hohere) trade schools. The great 
Koyal Technical High School is located in Charlottenburg, a suburb 
continuous with Berlin. This great institution, specializing in re- 
search in applied science, and attended in 1909-10 by some 5,300 
students from all parts of the civilized world, represents, with its 
fellows in other parts of Germany, the pinnacle of German industrial 
education. I am concerned chiefly with the foundations, however, and 
so turn to the humble, but no less important, improvement schools. 

The voluntary improvement schools, of which there were 33 in 
1909-10, are open, some to boys, some to girls, and some to those of 
both sexes. They are chiefly commercial in nature, and some wholly 
so. A few have industrial and housekeeping courses for girls, such 
as design drawing for tailors and for lingerie sewing, repairing, iron- 
ing, machine sewing and machine embroidery, tailoring, and millinery. 
Attendance on these voluntary improvement schools does not free 
from the obligation to attend a compulsory improvement school, 
where such obligation exists. 

The compulsory improvement schools (Pflichtfortbildungsschulen) 
are 10 in number and have their headquarters in as many chief 
buildings scattered through the city, though spreading over freely 
into the common school and other buildings where necessary. Some 
of these schools, as also some of the voluntary improvement schools, 



1 Die Deputation fur die stadtischen Fach- und Fortbildungsschulen. 
96 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF BERLIN. 97 

were once guild schools, since taken over by the city. Others have 
been city schools since the year 1799, though not becoming special- 
ized as industrial and commercial schools until the period beginning 
in 1873. The last stage in their development was the requirement 
in 1905 by city ordinance, passed under the permissive provision of 
the National Industrial Law, 1 of attendance of all male industrial 
and commercial workers 2 on the compulsory improvement school, 
from the time of their release from common school until their seven- 
teenth year. 3 As stated in the table in chapter 8, pages 83 and 84, 
throughout most of Prussia attendance on improvement schools is 
compulsory only by local ordinance. The Landtag had in 1911 a 
bill under consideration to require compulsory attendance through- 
out the State, in towns of 10,000 or larger population as well as in 
cities. 

The compulsory improvement school must furnish instruction and 
require attendance at least four hours a week, but not over six. The 
classes for unskilled workers extend through four hours for skilled 
workers, and for boys in commercial work through six hours weekly. 
The hours set are usually in afternoon or evening though sometimes 
in the morning, and never later than 8 in the evening. Some classes 
of skilled workers meet twice a week for three hours at a stretch, some 
once for six hours. The classes for unskilled workers are usually in 
the evening. 

The subjects of instruction are three: German, arithmetic, and 
drawing. There are no workshops in these schools. The pupils, all 
of whom are apprentices or unskilled boy workers, are grouped in 
classes according to their trades. The unskilled workers are grouped 
together and receive instruction more general in nature than that 
given to the apprentices. Their numbers are about one-third of the 
whole enrollment. Each of the 10 schools has classes for certain 
groups of trades. Thus the school which I visited 4 had 14 classes 
for metal workers, including 8 for wrought-iron workers, 5 for 
engravers and die sinkers, and 1 for molders. It had 42 classes for 
the art industries, including 10 for engravers, 9 for braziers, 13 for 
lithographers, etc., and 10 for bookbinders. It also had 12 classes 
for the unskilled workers, not separated closely according to their 
occupation. The total number of pupils in this school in the winter 
of 1909-10 was 2,940. 5 Many of the commoner trades have classes 
in a number of different buildings or in almost all. Where there are 
but a few apprentices of a trade in a district, classes are formed of 

i R. G. O., sec. 120; cf. ch. 8, p. 85. 

1 With minor exceptions. 

3 Der gegenwartige Zustand und die Nachsten Aufgaben des Berliner Fortbildungsschulwesens. Stadt 
schulrat Dr. Carl Michaelis, 1911. Also: Ubersicht fiber das Fach- und Fortbildungsschulwesen der Stadt 
Berlin, 1909-1910, pp. 61-65. 

* Of the second school district. 

* Ubersicht, pp. 69-71. 

88740°— 13 7 



98 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

those in related trades, or related branches of a trade. Those in 
commerce are usually in ungrouped classes, though there are some 
classes for certain branches, as for those in businesses selling iron 
products. 

The compulsory improvement schools of the whole city had in May, 
1909, separate classes for the following trades and groups of trades 1 
(the number of classes of all grades indicated after each trade): In 
the building trades, 82 — including masons, plasterers, and roofers (15) ; 
oven makers (3); woodworkers (45); painters (8); glaziers (6); stone- 
masons (5). Among metal workers, 234 — including in common 
classes (57); ironworkers (60); machine builders (42); mechanicians 
(57); plumbers (11); molders (7). Of the art trades, 89; made up 
of classes in common (7); engravers and chasers (12); brass founders 
(10); lithographers (15); those inbookmaking industries (12); photog- 
raphers (3) ; gold workers (5) ; tapestrers (15) ; sculptors (6) ; lacquerers 
(4). In clothing industries, 31; including tailors (21); furriers (4) 
shoemakers and saddlers (6). In the food industries, 41; constituted 
by bakers (23); confectioners (3); waiters and cooks (15). Of barbers 
and hairdressers, 15; consisting of classes in common (12); wig- 
makers (3). Of commercial workers, 158; made up of classes in 
common (149); druggists (4); iron goods dealers (5). Of unskilled 
workers, 335, all in classes in common; and in certain miscellaneous 
trades, 17; including dentists (4), musicians (2), and pattern makers 
(3). The total number of different sorts of classes was 39, practically 
all of these having a class or classes for each of the three successive 
years of the course. The total number of separate classes was 
exactly 1,000, and the average number of pupils to a class was 31.14. 

The German taught is identical with study of industry (Gewerbe- 
kunde), which means that in each class the teacher instructs the ap- 
prentices in technical, legal, civic, and other matters pertaining to the 
trade concerned, incidentally improving their oral expression. The 
students then write in their note books from memory an account of 
the subject just treated, and the teacher thus is able to correct their 
written expression. In some few classes, where the need is greatest, 
a little physics is taught by lecture and demonstration under the 
name of German or study of industry. 

The arithmetic is a continuation of that of the common school, but 
taught with special reference to each trade or group of trades. The 
drawing is partly free hand, partly mechanical, and is also specialized 
to meet the special needs of the several trades. The type of instruc- 
tion in general, and the ground covered, shows clearly the origin of 
these schools as variations from the older general continuation 
schools, whose function was to conserve and repeat the training of 
the common school, and if might be, to add slightly to it. As a con- 

1 Ubersicht, pp. 96-99. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF BERLIN. 99 

cession or adaptation to practical needs, the German and arithmetic 
were specialized, and applied to industrial needs, and drawing was 
introduced. 

The teachers are most of them professional teachers, selected from 
the best in the common schools. Some classes, especially drawing, 
are taught by practicing masters or journeymen, who must (as else- 
where throughout Prussia) attend a short pedagogical course before 
they begin to teach. There is some difference of opinion between the 
school authorities and the masters, as represented in the chamber of 
industry, as to the proportion of teachers in these schools who are 
professional teachers and tradesmen, respectively. The school direc- 
tors tend to exaggerate the number of practical men; the masters to 
underestimate their number. In 1909-10 there were 732 teachers in 
these schools, of whom 19 were artists, 11 were masters in handwork, 
and 69 were engineers, architects, technicians, and the like. The 
remaining 633 were professional teachers of different grades. 1 The 
masters, however, are not satisfied with the number of practical men 
teaching, nor with the extent to which the instruction is practical and 
adapted to the needs of industry (fachlich). They also wish more 
subdivision of classes, to meet the needs of specialized trades or 
branches of trades. In considering these criticisms, it must be borne 
in mind that the compulsory schools have been in existence only 
since 1905, and that they are being adapted steadily closer and closer 
to the needs of industry, though they have yet much to attain. The 
drawings exhibited show that much very good work has been done in 
the schools. 

In the winter term 1909-10, 32,320 pupils attended these com- 
pulsory schools, and in 1910-11 upward of 36,000. The costs, paid 
entirely by the city, were very slight, considering the great number 
attending. The total cost during the fiscal year 1910 was 1,089,910 
marks ($261,578.40), of which 811,910 marks ($194,858.40) was for 
salaries. 2 These figures do not include cost of buildings, but only 
their maintenance. Thus, the annual cost, aside from first cost of 
buildings, was in 1909-10 $8.09 per pupil. No tuition fees are 
charged in these compulsory schools. It must be remembered in 
considering this cost that assistant teachers are paid but 3 marks (72 
cents) an hour, and other costs are low more or less in proportion. 

More closely adapted to specific industrial needs in different trades 
is a large group of trade schools for apprentices. These schools are 
quite various in their nature and the sources from which they are 
supported. Eight of those existing in 1909-10 were supported by 
the city, the State, and by guilds, associations, and others interested. 

1 Verwaltungsbericht des Magistrats zu Berlin, 1910. No. 9. Bericht iiber das stadtische Fach- und Fort- 
bildungsschulwesen, p. 2. 
* Stadtshaushaltsetat: 1910. Zap I V. abteil, 10, Pflichtfortbildungsschulen- 



100 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

Seven were supported as above, except that the State furnished no 
aid, while six were supported and controlled by corporations and 
guilds, receiving merely financial aid and cooperation from the city. 
Of these last, four were recognized as substitutes for the compulsory 
improvement school. Attendance on none of the others freed from 
the obligation to attend this school. Most of these schools have 
Sunday or evening classes, or both, while very few have day classes. 

The largest of these apprentice trade schools is the Trade School 
for Book Printers (Die Fachschule fur Buchdrucker), founded in 
1875, which I visited. It is housed in a common-school building, 
where its classes meet two evenings a week, from 6 to 8. Its courses 
are of three years duration. Carefully planned by its directors to meet 
the special needs of their trade, and one of the few schools recognized 
by the city as a substitute for the compulsory improvement school, 
it is a type of the sort of school which many employers most prefer 
and a source of great pride and satisfaction to the association which 
founded and maintains it. This organization is the association of 
Berlin owners of book-printing establishments (Verein Berliner Buch- 
druckereibesitzer) . It chooses the directors and supports the school, 
except for the rooms provided by the city. This association was 
once a guild, but owing to the objection of some of its members 
changed to the looser organization of an association (Verein). 

The pupils are divided into two groups, the printers and the type- 
setters, who have separate classes. In the winter term of 1909-10 
there were 1,456 pupils in the two departments. The instruction is 
practically all technical, there being no workshops except one print- 
ing shop. The classes for printers include German, arithmetic, 
physics, mechanics, drawing, and trade theory. The classes for 
typesetters are in German, Latin, French, English, Greek, arithmetic, 
trade theory, drawing, setting of Greek and mathematical sentences. 1 
All of these courses are closely adapted to trade needs, the languages 
and mathematics, for example, being studied only in so far as will 
enable the apprentices to set type in these subjects. The masters 
are well satisfied with the results of the school, in improved work 
done by the apprentices. 

Another group of trade schools are the higher trade schools with 
classes for both journeymen and apprentices. These include: the 
Hall of Industries (Def Gewerbesaal) and the Second Handworkers' 
School (Die Zweite Handwerkerschule) , supported^ wholly by the 
the city; the First Handworkers' School (Die Erste Handwerker- 
schule), and the Building Trades School (Die Baugewerkschule), sup- 
ported by the city and State jointly; the City Higher Textile School 
(Die Stadtische Hohere Webeschule), supported by city, State, 
guilds, associations, and interested individuals; and the Berlin Cabi- 

i Ubersicht, pp. 284, 285. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF BERLIN. 101 

netmakers' School (Die Berliner Tischlerschule), supported by the 
city and by two guilds. Of these schools, two, the Hall of Industries 
and the Berlin Cabinetmakers' School, have, besides day classes for 
journeymen, seven branch Sunday and evening schools each through- 
out the city. 

The Berlin Cabinetmakers' School, which I visited, is designed 
primarily for journeymen and masters, though it also accepts those 
apprentices who have worked two years at their trade. It offers 
day courses for 40 weeks a year and of two years' duration. The 
object is to correct specialized training and to fit its students to 
become technicians, designers, foremen, and superintendents. Its 
subjects are both theoretical and practical, as shown in the following 
standard course: 1 

Subjects in the Berlin Cabinetmakers' School. 



Subjects. 



Practice in artistic eabinetmaking. 

Practice in machinery 

Study of materials 

Chemistry; 

Bookkeeping 

Trade arithmetic 

Calculation (of costs, etc.) 

Drawing 



Total hours per week. 



Hours per 
week. 



First 
year. 



48 



Second 
year. 



The school has very well-equipped shops and turns out work of a 
commercial character and very high grade. The design of furniture, 
of modest as well as of high cost, in Germany is on the whole of a 
high artistic grade. This result is largely due to the good work of 
such schools as this and the industrial art schools. The students 
make original designs, and execute many of them themselves. 
Others have been used in commercial work. The director is a master 
cabinetmaker and most of the teachers are experts in the trade. 
The school limits itself to furniture making, the First Handworkers' 
School specializing in interior architecture. The school also has 
departments for turning and sculpture. 

In its Sunday and evening classes scattered throughout the city 
instruction is given evenings from 7 to 9, and on Sunday mornings. 
The instruction is almost all technical, drawing being easily first in 
importance, and there being only three subjects involving shop work, 
machine practice, turning, and modeling and sculpture in wood. 
The other subjects taught are ornament drawing, projective drawing, 
study of fastenings for and forms of wood, perspective and shadow 

» Ubersicht, pp. 227ff. 



102 GEBMAN ESTDUSTEIAL EDUCATION. 

drawing, trade drawing, chemistry, trade arithmetic and calculation, 
and bookkeeping. The total number of students in day and evening 
departments in the winter, 1909-10, was 816. The cost for the year 
1909 * was 101,986 marks ($24,476.64). The city bears almost all 
of this expense, the guilds contributing but little. 

Another school visited, the City Higher Textile School, was estab- 
lished to meet the needs of the textile and clothing industries of 
Berlin. The instruction is technical and the school has many work- 
shops, but it meets commercial needs as well as industrial. Many or 
most of its students, by making cloth at its looms and dyeing them 
in its dye shops, learn the technical aspects of fabrics that they may 
the better judge them and so handle them to better advantage in 
commercial dealings. There are both day and evening departments. 
The day department includes the following commercial courses to 
train in the handling of cloth: Design drawing, clothing manufacture, 
lace making, hand and machine embroidery, weaving and knitting, 
and dyeing. 2 Many of the students are in, or expect to enter, textile 
industries. The school meets the needs of those in, or looking for- 
ward to, the greatest variety of positions. The graduates of its 
courses secure better positions because of their study there. 

These facts are shown especially in the evening dyeing classes, 
which draw apprentice dyers, technicians, university graduates in 
chemistry, and master dyers. The classes must naturally be divided 
into elementary and advanced. The results with all of these classes 
of students are seen in the attainment of special knowledge of the 
chemistry of dyeing and corresponding advancement. Practical master 
dyers, for example, who work ordinarily by rough rule-of-thumb 
methods, are enabled by this training to test their chemicals, and by 
this and other means to save materials. 

There were, in the winter of 1909-10, 158 pupils in the day courses, 
339 in those on evenings and Sundays. The total cost in 1909, 
exclusive of first cost of buildings, was 100,525 marks ($24,126), of 
which 12,290 marks ($2,949.60) was supplied by four interested 
guilds and associations, including the chamber of commerce. 

The First Handworkers' School was also visited. This school is a 
day and evening school for apprentices and journeymen, whose classes 
are almost exclusively theoretical (technical). Its only workshop is 
a small one for book printers. The Second Handworkers' School is 
of similar type, but with more practical instruction in workshops. 
The Building Trades School has practically all theoretical instruction, 
while the Hall of Industries, a school especially for the machine 
trades, has much practical shopwork in addition to theoretic 
instruction. Most of the apprentice trade schools also have shops. 

1 The latest year of which I have data on costs. 

*PTogramm der Stadtischen HoJieren Webeschule, Berlin, 1911, pp. 5, 6. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OP BERLIN. 103 

In such higher or lower trade schools as have workshops the 
apprentices and journeymen, many of whom receive but a one-sided 
and specialized training in their employer's shops, can learn some- 
what of the operations as well as of the theoretic basis of other 
branches of their trade. The improvement school can also correct 
one-sided shop training to a slight extent, but only by the spoken 
and written word (chiefly the former) and not by actual doing of the 
operations studied. 

Many specialized journeymen who as apprentices learned but a 
small range of operations in their employer's shop are enabled to 
change their branch of work and if necessary learn the new branch 
more quickly because of their school training. In some cases proc- 
esses learned in a trade school may enable the future journeyman 
or master to do work which would otherwise have had to be sent 
out to a special shop. Thus press gilding, a branch of bookbinding, 
is taught practically in Berlin trade schools, but is a class of work 
undertaken by few but special shops. The trade-school training is 
sufficient to enable one who has grasped it thoroughly to carry on 
press gilding commercially, as incidental to bookbinding. 

The quality of the work done in the higher trade schools is very 
evidently superior to that done by improvement school pupils. This 
is to be accounted for by the greater age of the pupils, the larger 
proportion of practical men who teach, and, in the more advanced 
classes, by the weeding process which has taken place at the end of 
the period of apprenticeship, for after this goal is reached no com- 
pulsion can force the journeyman to attend school unless he so 
desires, and only those continue in the trade school who intend to do 
their best and desire to advance. Many apprentices attend classes 
voluntarily in the apprentice trade schools, or evening departments 
of higher trade schools, in addition to their required attendance on 
improvement school. Such boys are in many cases the pick of the 
apprentices in earnestness and diligence. Some of the trade schools 
have no definite length of course, each boy or man advancing as fast 
as his capacity, application, and time permit. 

A number of guilds require all the apprentices of their members to 
attend a trade school. The compulsory guilds * especially in many 
cases make such requirement, as they are better fitted to execute it 
than are the free guilds. This greater power is due to their control in 
such matters over the whole local trade in question. Such guild 
compulsion usually applies only after the completion of the appren- 
tice's first year, for the masters do not consider that the average boy 
will benefit much from trade school until he is at least 15 years old 
and has had some experience in his trade. The compulsion applies 

1 In 1910 there were 26,994 members of compulsory guilds, with 8,837 apprentices; 22,907 members of 
free guilds, with 14,867 apprentices. Oeschdftsbericht der Handwerkskammer zu Berlin, 1909-10, pp. 43-67 



104 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

usually to a specific school and lasts ordinarily till the close of the 
apprenticeship; that is, for two or three years. Almost invariably it 
requires attendance evenings (and Sunday mornings sometimes); 
that is, during the apprentice's own time. Attendance on very few 
schools is accepted by the city in lieu of attendance on the compulsory 
improvement schools. 1 The consequence of these facts is that over 
5,000 2 Berlin apprentices must attend two schools during the last 
two or three years of their apprenticeship. 

The chamber of industry has established a number of both theo- 
retical and practical master courses for its district of Berlin and 
environs. Twenty-four bookkeeping courses were held in 1909-10, 
of 30 hours total length each. 3 A course was opened whenever 20 
participants offered themselves; masters and journeymen and also 
wives and daughters of masters were admitted. Keviewing and 
practice bookkeeping courses were also given. Two courses under- 
took a general study of business, including such items as the law of 
handwork associations, struggles between employers and employees, 
etc. Fifteen courses in calculation took up cost accounting and the 
like. Twenty-two courses of very thorough scope and duration of 
48 to 60 hours prepared journeymen for the master's examination. 
The subjects were bookkeeping, calculation, study of notes, exchange, 
and checks, study of industry, industrial insurance laws, associations, 
and a study of special trade and business matters (special for each 
trade) .* A course in the law of associations was also given under the 
chief union of German industrial associations. Seventeen practical 
master courses were also given, of from 12 to 96 hours duration each, 
and attended by 345 participants. 5 The Berlin practical master 
courses differ from those in Hamburg in that they are more con- 
cerned to lead the way along trodden paths than in Hamburg, where 
the emphasis is all on the latest methods. 

The Victoria Improvement School (Die Viktoria Fortbildungs- 
schule) for girls and women, which I visited, is a private philan- 
thropic school 6 some 25 years old, rooms for which are furnished 
by the city. It includes industrial, commercial, pedagogical, and 
domestic science work. Some definite results of the school's indus- 
trial training have been noted. Domestic training enables the girls 
to start as servants with 25 instead of 12 marks ($6 instead of $2.88) 
a month and to obtain better future wage also. For dressmakers, 
milliners, and the like the school training enables the girls to secure 
pay, though small, from the start, instead of working for about two 

iE. g., of those above mentioned, on none of the six higher schools, and only on the Trade School for 
Book Printers. 
2 5,554 apprentices. tJbersicht, Supplementary table. 

sTotal cost, 3,673 marks ($881.52); per participant, 5.43 marks ($1.30). Geschaftsbericht. 
«563 candidates passed the master's examination in 1909-10. Ibid., pp. 170, 171. 
&Cost, 5,952 marks ($l'428.67), total, or 17.1 marks ($4.14) per capita. 
6 One of two such schools in'Berlin. 



THE INDUSTEIAL SCHOOLS OF BERLIN. 



105 



years without wage, as do almost all girls not specially trained. The 
advance in wage is also more rapid than for girls not school trained. 
Several large firms in Berlin have their own apprentice schools. 
I visited what is probably the largest, that of the monster works of 
Siemans & Halske, manufacturers of electrical goods and ma- 
chinery. The company had 225 apprentices in 191 1, who were trained 
in a special shop and school, established in 1908, and recognized by 
the city as a substitute for the compulsory improvement schools. 
The instruction includes the same subjects as in these city schools 
more specialized, however, to meet the needs of these apprentices 
and with some additional subjects. The curriculum is as follows: 1 

Curriculum of apprentice school of the Siemens and Halske factory. 





Hours per week. 


Subjects. 


First 
year. 


Second 
year. 


Third 
year. 


Fourth 
year. 


Total. 




2 
1 


1 
1 
1 
1 






3 








2 




1 
1 

1 
1 
2 
1 

1 


2 
2 

2 


2 




1 


3 




1 








1 




2 


2 
1 


8 




4 






1 








2 














6 


7 


8 


6 


27 







After the usual trial period, the apprentices are regularly indentured 
to the firm for a period of four years. During their first year they 
work only in the apprentice shop, except when in the adjacent class- 
rooms. Their tasks for the first year are in most cases merely exer- 
cises, through which they learn the skillful use of tools, principally 
hand tools. The amount of filing done is extraordinary, this type of 
work being regarded as an especially good training in steadiness and 
exactness and a suitable introduction to the trades prepared for. 
In a few cases, as with hammer heads, calipers, and the like, the 
products are used in the works. Throughout the first year the 
apprentices receive no pay. 

At the close of the year each one is given a chance to see the 
different departments of the factory and to choose the one in which 
he wishes to work. Thereafter they work among the journeymen 
in that department of the factory at regular commercial work, still 
continuing their attendance on the school six or eight hours a week. 
During the last quarter year of their apprenticeship- so many of 
them as desire return to the apprentice shop to draw and execute 

iDiplom Ingeneur R. von Voss: Zur Frage der Ausbildung von Lehrlingen/iir die Gross Industrie. " Werk~ 
stattstechnik ". Heft 6, 1911. Verlag Julius Springer, Berlin. 



106 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

their journeyman's piece. The making of this piece is desired by the 
company, though not required. Most of the boys make it. The 
journeymen pieces on exhibition are a fine set, of which the firm is 
proud. In the journeyman's examination, the apprentices of Siemens 
Halske stand superior to all others in the same trades in Berlin. 

The examination passed, or the apprenticeship merely ended, the 
journeyman or factory worker may go into any one of the four chief 
trades practiced in the factory — that of ironworker, turner, machinist, 
or electrician — and there specialize more narrowly than before. 

The officials of the company with whom I talked expressed the 
greatest satisfaction with the apprentice school. Although yet so 
young, it has already shown fine results in raising the interest and 
skill of those it has trained. The company prefer their own to the 
city school, because their own instruction, given entirely by engineers 
and other industrial and commercial experts of the firm, is more 
practical and more closely adapted to the parallel-shop training, 
and to their industrial needs. A satisfactory proportion of the grad- 
uated apprentices, now journeymen, remain with the company. 
Further, the apprentices, considering their four-year term as a whole, 
and despite the cost of the apprentice school and shop and the 
unproductive first year of work, are found to be profitable to the 
company. 

Looking over the Berlin industrial schools as a whole, we see that 
here, as elsewhere in Germany, industrial education does not shorten 
the period of apprenticeship, except in so far as (chiefly from the 
standpoint of the employer) the taking out of time for the school 
work may be said to do so. Generally speaking, the schools increase 
the interest of the pupils in their work, but this does not apply to 
all pupils, for in the compulsory-improvement schools many of the 
pupils are not there from choice and are lazy and indifferent. There 
is a special demand by employers for those who have studied in 
trade schools, wherever such study is optional, because of the greater 
skill and industrial intelligence thereby gained. This demand shows 
itself in the better positions and wages secured by those who continue 
in the trade schools more than the minimum period required. 

Diligence in industrial school is practically necessary to pass the 
master's examination, which, as well as practical skill, requires 
theoretic knowledge which can be learned by most only in the schools. 1 
This fact is a spur to some workers, but not to all, for the organization 
of modern industry, in Germany as well as in the United States, 
makes it hopeless for the majority of workmen to strive to become 
independent, or foremen, or technicians; and to be a master is only 
useful as a means by which to attain one of these stations. The 

1 CI. curriculum of chamber of industry preparatory master's examination course, p. 104, above. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF BERLIN. 107 

majority of German apprentices look forward to a lifetime as journey- 
men, or even as specialized factory workers who have not attained 
the legally denned journeyman's rank — i. e., passed the journeymen's 
examination. 

The industrial schools have had a most salutary influence on the 
journeyman's examination in Berlin, which formerly was very poor. 1 
The Germans set much store on these examinations, as furnishing 
definite tests of proficiency, theoretical and practical. 

The school products are not sold, except in a few cases. Thus 
in the Berlin Cabinetmakers' School a student may sometimes sell 
his work, he in such case paying the school for the materials used. 
In most schools there are no considerable number of commercial 
products produced, and the schools usually prefer to keep the best 
work for exhibition. The view seems to be general that workshop 
instruction of a sort to be best given in schools and commercial 
production do not go easily hand in hand. 

With minor exceptions, the Berlin industrial schools accept as 
students only those actually working as apprentices, journeymen, 
or otherwise, in the trade studied. There is thus no undue increase 
of the numbers entering single trades, for the number studying each 
trade is automatically adjusted to its needs. This is the case with 
practically all the schools I visited and studied in Germany. There 
is much unanimity on the question as to whether attendance on trade 
schools before the student has worked at the trade is desirable. 
Practical work in industry is always regarded as prerequisite to trade- 
school training received to good effect. 

The expense of the industrial schools, though heavy, is regarded 
by the taxpayers as well worth while. The city provides the build- 
ings in every case. The other expenses are shared as stated above. 
The expense per pupil is much greater in trade than in improvement 
schools, and, as is to be expected, higher in those trade schools having 
many shops and instructing advanced pupils than in others. The 
trade schools, higher and lower, enroll only about one-third the num- 
ber of pupils that are in the compulsory improvement schools 
(11,754 to 31,466); while the proportion of apprentices in trade 
schools is also about one- third of those in the compulsory improve- 
ment schools (7,293 to 19,928). 2 

All classes of people are now well accustomed to the industrial 
schools and favor them. The masters formerly opposed them as a 
class, but now only a few individual masters do so. In no trade, as a 
whole, are the masters now opposed to the schools. As stated above, 
however, the masters prefer the trade to the improvement schools. 
They are not fully satisfied with the improvement schools, but 

1 Vorschulrat, Dr. Carl Michaelis. * Ubersicht, 1910, supplementary table. 



108 GEKMAKT INDUSTEIAL EDUCATION. 

not so dissatisfied as to be conducting a campaign for any change. 
The comparative attitudes toward the industrial schools of the 
industrial schoolmen and the employers indicates that these schools 
are the subject of chief interest to the schoolmen, but only one of a 
number of matters of importance to the masters. 

Employers at first opposed compulsory attendance on improve- 
ment schools in the daytime. Now most of them have bowed to 
the inevitable and profess to like the new arrangement; but it is 
doubtful whether this professed satisfaction is always genuine. 
Employers are more or less favorable to the compulsory daytime 
attendance, according to the needs and exigencies of their trade, as 
has been described in the case of the Hamburg employers. 1 

Masters, most of them guild members, are on the directorates of 
practically all of these schools. The guilds do not in Berlin, as in 
some other cities, supply models or materials for school shops, except 
in case of guild schools and a few others, but they maintain advisory 
relations with them, especially close in case of the trade schools. 

» Cf. p. 94, ch. 9. 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF MUNICH. 

Munich, the capital of the State of Bavaria (Bayern), is one of the 
most generally attractive cities of Germany. In 1905 its population 
was about 583,000. Brewing is its greatest industry, but many 
artistic handicrafts find here a home. Its chief industries include 
the manufacture of machinery, bronze, silver, and other metal ware, 
furniture, leather products and gloves, artificial flowers, printing and 
lithography, and glass staining. In Munich, as in south Germany 
generally, factories are less and handwork more prominent than in 
north Germany. 

There were formerly guild schools in the city, but there now (1911) 
exists but one, that for painters. The former guild schools have been 
absorbed into the city school system with the approval of the guilds. 
The masters prefer the city schools, since they save them all expense 
except the slight aid which they give the city schools. 

The Bavarian school law, under which the local ordinances of 
Munich have force, requires three years of attendance at Sunday 
school, immediately following the compulsory common school 
attendance, of all boys and girls not excused for adequate reason. 
The Sunday school provides a minimum of but two hours of instruc- 
tion other than religious, and may be on Sunday or on week day. 
But the obligation to attend Sunday school may be fulfilled by 
attending an improvement school recognized by the district govern- 
ment as an adequate substitute, because it has not only special 
(trade) subjects, but enough of the general subjects characteristic of 
the Sunday school. The provisions of the National Industrial Law 
pertaining to compulsory improvement schools l are explicitly 
accepted and the compulsion of employers of boys and girls to allow 
them to attend such schools where local ordinance requires is 
reiterated. 2 

Munich has had an industrial continuation school for apprentices 
and an industrial improvement school for journeymen since 1875. 
These schools were for years but little specialized, while the appren- 
tice school gave no trade instruction at the start. The present 
organization of the schools has taken its stamp from the original and 
resourceful personality of Dr. Georg Kerschensteiner, since 1895 

1 R. G. O., sees. 120, 139, 142. Cf. ch. 8, p. 81. 

3 Royal supreme law concerning school obligations, June 4, 1903; amended March 7, 1906. Text in Baar, 
pp. 19, 20. 

109 



110 GEBMAN INDTJSTKIAL EDUCATION - . 

superintendent of Munich schools. In 1900 Dr. Kerschensteiner 
won the prize of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Erfurt for the best 
essay on the subject of the most desirable education for boys between 
the common-school and the military-service ages (from the four- 
teenth to the twentieth year). This essay, Staatsburgerliche Erzie- 
Tiung der deutschen Jugend, has been widely read, and in 1910 was 
translated into English under the title "Education for Citizenship." 1 
In this book Dr. Kerschensteiner asks: "How must the modern 
constitutional State fulfill its functions?" The answer given is this: 
"By giving to everyone the most extensive education, one that 
insures (a) a knowledge of the functions of the State and (b) personal 
efficiency of the highest degree attainable." 2 His educational 
groundwork is stated elsewhere as follows : 

The final goal of all public schools which are supported by public funds is the 
training of the pupils to be useful citizens. A useful citizen is one who contributes 
by his work, directly or indirectly, to the attainment by the State of its goal as a 
legal and cultural community. The first task of the school is the promotion, so far 
as may be, of the skill as well as joy in work of the pupil. The second task is the 
early accustoming of the pupil to placing his joy and skill in work in the service of 
his companions and fellow men as well as of his own. The third task is the connect- 
ing of the so-built-up readiness for service, consideration, and ethical devotion, with 
an insight into the purpose of the State, so far as such an insight can be developed 
in the pupils, considering their position and degree of maturity. 3 

The relation of means to end in Dr. Kerschensteiner' s mind is 
shown best by an extract from an interview when he was lecturing 
in this country. He says: 

The idea of industrial education is not the foundation of my work. The object of 
these schools is to train citizens. To train citizens it is necessary to enter into what 
is the daily life of 90 per cent of our people. Thus it becomes necessary to make the 
workshop the center of the school. 4 

Again, in his prize essay, he writes: 

As a means of insuring personal efficiency, and so of enabling a pupil to take that 
part in society which his capacities warrant, the first place must be assigned to a 
training in trade efficiency. This is the condition sine qua non of all civic education. 5 

In this trade training, the foundation for the civic virtues is laid 
in "conscientiousness, diligence, perseverence, self-restraint, and 
devotion to a strenuous life." 5 

The year after coming into office as superintendent of schools, Dr. 
Kerschensteiner called together the presidents of guilds, represent- 
ing the local industries, and proposed to them that the city found a 
system of trade schools. They voted against him, but he finally won 

1 Pressland, A. J., translator for the Commercial Club of Chicago, 1910. 

2 Ibid., pp. 21, 23. 

3 Kerschensteiner, Dr. Georg. Organization und Lehrplane der obligatorischen Fach- und fortbildnngs- 
schulenfiir Knaben in Miinchen, 1910. Einleitung, pp. 8, 9. 

* N. Y. Times, Dec. 4, 1910. 

6 Education for citizenship, p. 24. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF MUNICH. Ill 

them over. In 1900 he persuaded the city to reorganize its school 
system by the introduction of an extensive system of trade schools. 
There were factory schools in existence at the time, but as Dr. Ker- 
schensteiner says, they were inadequate, for they shaped the boy 
"for the factory, not for the boy." 1 In this connection it may be well 
to quote Dr. Kerschensteiner's statement that "nowhere outside of 
Russia have I found such neglect of childhood as in England and 
America." To prevent such neglect in Munich, the industrial 
schools were established. Since the beginning of the school year 
1906-7 they have been fully organized and in full operation. 

There were in 1910-11 in Munich 55 trade improvement schools, 
including 2 commercial schools, whose attendance is compulsory for 
apprentices. 2 Ten compulsory district continuation schools meet the 
needs of the unskilled boy workers and of those in trades having too 
few apprentices to allow a separate school. One compulsory "help- 
school" aids weak-minded pupils. Twenty-three of the apprentice 
trade improvement schools have voluntary courses for masters and 
journeymen in connection with them, and there are other independent 
courses and schools for the same class of workers. Compulsory im- 
provement schools are also provided for girls. 

The boys' improvement schools and the journeyman and master 
courses are housed in seven large buildings erected for the purpose in 
different parts of the city. 3 Some of the improvement school classes 
overflow into the common school buildings. The trade improvement 
schools are grouped in buildings according to related trades, though 
some trades are represented by several schools in different buildings. 
The school authorities profess themselves willing to organize a trade 
school for each trade having 25 or more apprentices. The most 
important trades have four schools, most have only one, while a few 
petty trades have no separate school, and their apprentices attend a 
school in common. The trade schools, with their groupings in the 
several buildings, are as follows: 4 I. Liebherrstrasse Industrial 
School: 5 (1) Turners, brush makers, and related industries; (2) drug- 
gists, and dealers in dye and other materials; (3) leather dressers and 
hand shoemakers; (4) wood and ivory carvers; (5) chimney sweeps; 
(6) coachmen; (7) saddlers and trunk makers; (8) coopers; (9) iron- 
workers (building and fine work); (10) smiths; (11) joiners and cab- 
inetmakers; (12) shoemakers; (13) tapestrers, decorators, lace 
makers; (14) oven makers and setters; (15) watchmakers; (16) wagon 
builders. II. Pranckhstrasse School: (17) Fine machinists, opti- 
cians, and instrument makers; (18) machine builders; (19) mechan- 

i N. Y. Tribune, Dec. 4, 1910. 

' Fiinfter Yahresbericht der mannlichen Fortbildungs- und Gcwerbeschulen Milnchens. 1910-11. 
8 Value ofland, buildings, and equipment, 1910: 4,824,099.85 marks (.$1,157,783.96). Yahresbericht, 1910-11, 
p. 19. 
« Yahresbericht, 1910-11, pp. 5-8. 
* The school that I visited. 



112 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

ics, electricians, and gunmakers; (20) ironworkers (second depart- 
ment); (21) joiners (second department); (22) tinners, installers, 
fitters' helpers, and metal stampers; (23) bookbinders; (24) book 
printers; (25) lithographers and stone printers; (26) photographers 
and chemists; (27) metal casters, brass founders, and chasers; (28) 
tin casters. III. Elisabethplatz School: (29) Coppersmiths; (30) 
machine builders (second department); (31) mechanics, etc. (same 
as 19, second department); (32) ironworkers (third department); 
(33) tailors; (34) joiners (third department). IV. Gotzingerplatz 
School: (35) Machine builders (third department); (36) mechanics, 
etc. (third department); (37) ironworkers (fourth department); 
(38) joiners (fourth department). V. Single scattered schools: (39) 
Bath assistants, hairdressers, and wigmakers; (40 and 41) hotel 
keepers (2 departments); (42) gardeners; (45) confectioners and pastry- 
cooks; (46) butchers (at the city slaughterhouse) ; (47) musicians and 
music pupils. VI. Louisenstrasse School: Journeymen's and master's 
courses chiefly; also (48) masons, stone masons, and plasterers; (49) 
dentists; (50) jewelers, gold and silver workers ; (51) stuccoworkers and 
sculptors. VII. Westenriederstrasse School: Journeymen's and mas- 
ters' courses chiefly; also (52) decorative painters, lacquerers, gilders, 
and cask painters; (53) glaziers, glass, enamel, and porcelain painters. 
VIII. The Commercial Improvement School, embracing schools for 
(54) those in commerce; (55) clerks and Government officials. 

All boys in Bavaria may leave the common school when they are 14 
years old and girls when 13, unless they have completed it before. 
About three-fifths in Munich complete the course without repeating 
a year. They are then usually 14 or 15 years old. Of those who do 
not go to a higher education, about four-fifths enter industry or com- 
merce as apprentices or clerks, and one-fifth become unskilled or 
juvenile workers. Every boy in Munich who need no longer attend 
the common school must attend a trade improvement (or continua- 
tion) school for at least three years immediately following the com- 
mon school attendance, and generally, if an apprentice, throughout 
his apprenticeship. Under the National Industrial Law this obliga- 
tion can not last beyond the eighteenth year. 1 Girls must attend 
improvement school for three years or at least until they are 16 years 
old. 2 Compulsory attendance for girls has been found as necessary 
as for boys, to prevent employers wishing cheap labor from employing 
girls to the displacement of boys. 3 Boys unusually well prepared 
may, on evidence of their proficiency, be advanced on entering a 
trade school a term, a year, or even two years. Those who have 

i R. G. O., sec. 120. 

a Kerschensteiner: Fach u. Fortbildungsschulen Munchens, pp. 5, 11; also: Satzungen fur die Foribil- 
dungsschulen der K. Haupt- und Residenzstadt Munchen, 1905, sec. 20-21, p. 8. 
* Satzungen, sees. 20. 2, 3. p. 8. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF MUNICH. 



113 



satisfied the nominal obligation to attendance, but who have not 
reached the proper proficiency, may be required to attend longer, 
but not longer than the completion of their eighteenth year. 1 

The hours of instruction in the trade (including the commercial) 
improvement schools range from 7 to 11 per week, in most cases 8 
to 10 hours, varying between the different schools. By municipal 
ordinance, none of the compulsory instruction is given after 7 p. m., 
though some voluntary classes even for apprentices are held later. 
There are almost no classes on Sunday. Most of the schools have 
classes from 4 to 6 hours consecutively, usually in the afternoon 
and early evening, though sometimes in the morning. The appren- 
tices thus attend either about 2 half days or about 1 full day. 
The abolition from among the compulsory classes of late evening 
instruction improves the quality of the work done by the pupils. 
The school year is about 10 months. 

The curriculum and general plan of the trade (improvement) 
school for fine mechanics is typical of these schools. 2 In this school 
opticians' and instrument makers' apprentices study 9 to 9^ hours 
1 day of each week, closing at 7, for 4 years (in most of the 
schools for but 3 years). The subjects taught are as follows: 3 

Curriculum of the trade improvement school for fine mechanics. 



Subjects. 



Religion 

Business composition and reading 

Industrial arithmetic and bookkeeping 

Ethics and civics 

Physics 

Trade drawing 

Practical instruction with study of materials and processes 

Hours per week 



Hours of instruction. 



First 
year. 



Second 
year. 



Third 
year. 



Fourth 
year. 



Religious instruction imparted by a priest or teacher, Roman 
Catholic or Protestant, appointed by the religious authorities, is 
given in all the trade improvement schools. The business com- 
position aims to give familiarity with business forms and practice in 
writing business letters. The reading is so selected as to have an 
ethical value and tempt the pupils to acquire the taste for good 
reading. The industrial arithmetic and bookkeeping is concerned 
with practical problems of computation of solids, keeping personal 
and business accounts, making business estimates and the like. The 

1 Satzungen, sees. 20, 2, 3. p. 8. 

2 A complete account of the curricula of several other of the Munich trade improvement schools can be 
found in Bulletin No. 14 Nat. Soc. Promot. Indus. Educ: "The trade continuation schools of Munich." 

* Yahresbericht, 1910-11, pp. 120, 121. 

88740°— 13 8 



114 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

ethics and civics (Lebens-und burgerkunde) are designed to help the 
student to adjust himself to his environment, and include studies of 
hygiene, ethics, apprenticeship and industrial relations, history and 
present conditions of industry, the rise of mechanics, the town, dis- 
trict, State, and nation, and the rights and duties of the citizen 
relative to each. The physics is elementary and practical. The 
trade drawing is practical and receives much attention. Dr. Ker- 
schensteiner says of this trade school as of the others: "Nothing is 
drawn that is not made in the workshop, and nothing made there 
that is not drawn." 1 

The practical instruction aims to make the pupils acquainted by 
observation and practice with the chief materials, tools, processes, 
and products of his trade. According to Dr. Kerschensteiner: "We 
intend that the boy shall understand, at least once, every important 
process or method in his trade, and shall perform it himself, either in 
miniature, or, whenever possible, in real materials." 2 In the Fine 
Mechanics' Trade School the different kinds of iron and steel, tem- 
pering, defects, measurements, geometrical forms and their produc- 
tion, hand and machine tools, other metals, filing, turning, and other 
growingly complex measurements and processes are studied and 
practiced. 

Other German industrial schools than those in Munich have work- 
shops, and the presence of these is practically universal in higher 
trade schools, as those for journeymen or masters. Many other im- 
provement schools also have workshops. But nowhere, as in Munich, 
do workshops in the improvement schools play so large a part through- 
out a comprehensive system as in the work of those schools. In most 
other German improvement school systems workshops are incidental. 
Here they are, as they are intended to be, the center and focusing 
point of the whole instruction. 3 In number of workshops, in their 
general application to all the industrial trade schools, and in the 
time given to instruction in them also, the Munich industrial schools 
are regarded universally as the leading example of workshops in the 
improvement schools. Wherever in conversation the question as to 
the expediency of such shops was raised, the names of Kerschen- 
steiner and Munich were quick to appear as the leading theoretical 
exponent and the practical example, respectively, of the system. I 
shall return later to the discussion of these workshops, the crux of 
the Munich industrial school system. 

The practical classes average 12 to 15 pupils per teacher; 4 the 
theoretical classes, 30 to 40. The trade classes were formerly larger, 

1 Kerschensteiner: Fach- und Fortbildungsschulen, p. 13. Teachers in the trade schools say this maxim 
is not carried out literally. 

2 New York Tribune, Dec. 4, 1910. 

3 Kerschensteiner, G. "The organization of the continuation school in Munich," p. 19. In three lec- 
tures, etc. 

* With extremes of perhaps 10 and 24. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF MUNICH. 115 

but were found to be unsuccessful. Where a school has more than 
one class of each grade, the better and the poorer pupils are placed 
in separate classes. Examinations, practical and theoretical, are 
held at the close of the courses, and certificates given to those who 
pass them. 

The teachers of the theoretical subjects are almost all common 
school teachers; those of the practical (workshop) subjects are chiefly 
masters and journeymen of the respective trades. The teachers in 
the trade improvement schools (excluding the commercial schools) 
are classed as follows (June, 1911): Head teachers, 106; chief indus- 
trial teachers, 40; common school teachers, 103; teachers from in- 
dustrial positions, 88; those from other positions, 29. Thus 88 out 
of 366 teachers in these schools are practical industrial workers 
(masters and journeymen). 1 The practical men — masters and jour- 
neymen — who teach trades are required to attend for two years a 
class in teaching principles and methods, taught by a city school 
inspector. Some 2 teachers of trade subjects (such as trade drawing, 
study of materials, and industry and workshop instruction) are 
common school teachers who have learned somewhat of the technic 
of the trades in commercial shops. The masters are satisfied with 
all but these teachers but do not believe that they can give first-rate 
practical workshop and other trade instruction. The trade teachers 
are paid 96 marks ($23.04) for each hour a week taught through the 
year. The other teachers receive specified amounts, from $720 to 
$1,300, with retiring pensions tor long service. 3 

The relation of the Munich trade schools to the employers and 
guilds is peculiarly close. The chambers of commerce and industry 
nominate such guild members as are eligible to the school directo- 
rates, and each directorate must include at least one member (and 
may have as many as three) of the group of trades served by the 
school. The nominated body of eligibles, which includes most of 
the trade leaders in the city, may inspect the schools, advise as to 
instruction, propose trade teachers, take part in the oral and inspect 
the written examinations. The employers in each trade are also 
consulted as to the hours for the compulsory and other instruction 
most satisfactory to them. In return the employers are expected 
to and do aid the schools by advice, gift, or loan of materials, models, 
and tools, and by watching over the regular attendance of their 
apprentices or other boys and girls employed. 4 At first the guilds 
and individual masters aided the schools by supplying tools, mate- 
rials, and models, and they still do so somewhat, but in the main 
they now find it more convenient to contribute instead small sums 

1 Compiled from figures in Yahresbericht, 1910-11, pp. 408-419. 

* "A few only," said a teacher; "A growing number," said the chamber of industry. 

» Sadler, ch. 19. 

« Satzungen, Dec. 17, p. 7. 



116 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

through their guilds. Masters who belong to no guild must con- 
tribute a like amount directly. 

The 10 district continuation schools are primarily for unskilled 
workers, though a few apprentices of scattering small trades attend 
also. They require attendance for eight hours a week for two years. 
Their several curricula differ but slightly, and are represented by 
that of the Plinganstrasse school : 1 

Curriculum of the Plinganstrasse district school. 



Subjects. 



Hours of in- 
struction. 



First 
year. 



Second 
year. 



Religion 

Composition and reading 1 

Arithmetic 1 • 

Ethics and civics 

Gymnastics 

Manual training and drawing . 



Hours per week . 



1 Alternately 1 and 2 hours. 

The arithmetic is designed to aid the pupil to keep his accounts 
and to understand simple dealings with banks, with the national 
insurance funds, and the like. The ethics and civics is much the same 
as for apprentices, but with no special application to any trade. 
The manual training and drawing aim to arouse the interest of the 
boys in things mechanical, that some may seek to enter the trades, 
and to prepare them the better for entrance into the trades and 
trade schools. 2 

The higher trade schools include day trade schools, and courses for 
journeymen and masters. Some of these occupy buildings devoted 
almost exclusively to them, while 23 are connected with improve- 
ment schools of the same trade. Attendance on all of these schools 
is purely voluntary. There is a day trade school for woodworking 
and interior furnishing, with 55 students, and a day trade school for 
artistic bookbinding with 25 students (1910-11). In each of the two 
large buildings given over chiefly to higher trade courses, there are 
both Sunday and evening schools for journeymen and masters 
engaged in industry, and day courses of 36 to 42 hours total dura- 
tion for the same classes of workers when out of work. Two public 
halls give opportunity for drawing practice and for instruction for 
those in the building trades, one in free-hand and the other in trade 
drawing. All of these courses are arranged to suit the convenience 

1 Yahresbericht, 1910-11, p. 391. 

» Kerschensteiner: Fach- und Fortbiliungssehulen Miinchens, pp. 329-331. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF MUNICH. 117 

of those to be benefited and thus are adapted to special trade 
exigencies. Short courses are quickly arranged, if need be, when any 
considerable unemployment causes temporary demand for them. 
Apprentices, when their period of compulsory attendance is over, 
liking the new freedom, usually do not attend any school for two or 
throe years. Many move to other States. But a considerable pro- 
portion of journeymen, when they reach the age of 20 to 22, return 
to the public trade schools for further and voluntary work. Journey- 
men and masters up to 50 years of age are found in these schools. 

Education for girls has not received much attention as yet in 
Munich. Improvement schools for girls require but three hours a 
week attendance, which period will be doubled from 1912 on. There 
is not large need as yet for industrial schools for women in Munich. 
They go into but few industries — the women's industries, as house- 
keeping and domestic service, dress and hat making, photography, 
etc., besides commercial work. Girls are free to attend the boys' 
trade schools, if they wish. Domestic science is the chief study in 
the compulsory improvement schools. A voluntary improvement 
school with general, commercial, and household subjects; a volun- 
tary eighth class of the common school; and two private schools 
subsidized by the city — the Riemerschmid Commercial School and 
the Woman's Work School — also minister to the wants of girls and 
women. 

There were in June, 1910-1 1, 1 in the 55 trade improvement 
schools, 9,330 pupils; in the 127 journeymen's classes, 2,733, of 
whom 450 were in day trade schools and courses; in the 10 dis- 
trict continuation schools, 1,018; in the compulsory improve- 
ment schools for girls, about 7,500. The total cost of all these 
schools, except those for girls, was in 1910-11 1,169,781.47 marks 
($280,746.55). This included 120,000 marks ($28,800) for new 
buildings, repairs, and rent, but takes no account of the original cost, 
interest, or sinking fund, on a property in land, buildings, and fur- 
nishings valued at 4,824,099.85 marks ($1,157,783.96). The cost in 
1910-11, exclusive of existing permanent plant, for all pupils, except 
girls, was 98.42 marks ($21 .46) per pupil. 2 The pupils in the improve- 
ment schools pay no regular tuition fees, and but trifling fees for the 
use of materials, etc. Those in the higher trade schools pay small 
fees, as 50 cents to $1 a month. The city common schools cost 93 
marks ($22.32) per pupil, 3 which shows the improvement schools to 
be not very expensive in comparison. The taxpayers, however, 
sometimes grumble at these heavy expenses, but the city adminis- 
tration is liberal with the schools notwithstanding. 

I Yahresbericht, 1910-11. 

'Computed from figures in Yahresbericht, 1910-11; especially pp. 17-19. 

* Kerschensteiner: The Continuation School in Munich, in Three Lectures, p. 24. 



118 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

The results of the trade improvement schools are evident in better 
work done by the apprentices, especially shown by better journey- 
men's examinations. 1 In 1907, the guilds or associations of master 
printers, tailors, shoemakers, and tapestrers declared that the 
journeymen's examinations were better on account of the improve- 
ment schools. 2 The results on specialization are favorable, enabling 
a specialized apprentice as a journeyman to learn another branch of 
his trade more quickly than he could do without the school training. 3 

The school attendance has been bettered by the change in the 
type of improvement schools, as has also the attention and zeal of 
the pupils in the schools. The employers differ as to whether this 
improvement extends also to the shops where the pupils work. The 
pupils quite generally like the schools, often better than the shops. 
The technical and especially the practical training (workshop) 
attracts them most. A number of masters or guilds claim to see an 
improvement in the conduct of the boys attributable to the schools. 4 

The masters regard these schools as equally efficient as the former 
guild schools. 3 In general, with qualifications to be noted later, the 
masters are satisfied with the new industrial schools. One patent 
and avowed reason for the approval of the masters is that the public 
schools save them money formerly spent on guild schools. Most 
individual masters and the majority in most trades are fairly well 
satisfied with or at least tolerate the compulsory day instruction. 
Some trades as a whole, as the smiths and the wrought-iron workers, 5 
are actively opposed to this system because it disturbs their work 
greatly, the journeymen in these trades working always with the 
immediate aid of apprentices. The bakers, on the other hand, are 
actively for the day attendance, since their work is at night. 3 More 
and more, as also in other cities in Germany, employers are coming 
not only to tolerate but to actively call for the use of working hours 
for compulsory instruction. Thus, for example, the guilds of copper- 
smiths, joiners, and typesetters declare the day attendance to be 
superior to the evening, and state or imply that it is worth whatever 
extra cost it involves to the employer. 6 The employers in some cases 
pay the same wages to their apprentices or unskilled workers as if 
part of their working day were not given to school work. In most 
cases, however, the boy must accept a lower wage on this account. 

Of the school workshops, the approval of the masters is much less 
unanimous and is generally more qualified when given. Of the 
opinions of guilds and other employers' associations, published by 

1 Handwerkskammer, Munich. 

^Bericht uber die Bewahrung der Neugestaltung der gewerblichen Fortbildungsschulen Munchens, 1907, 
pp. 1-8. 
3 Handwerkskammer, Miinchen. 
* Bericht uber Bewahrung. 
6 Schlossers. 
6 Bericht uber Bewahrung, pp. 2, 3. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF MUNICH. 119 

the school board in 1907, a majority expressed approval of the tech- 
nical training, but few specifically of the practical (workshop) train- 
ing. Those guilds specifically approving the workshop instruction 
were those of the lithographers and stone printers, tin casters, drug- 
gists (of all Bavaria), wrought-iron workers, and butchers. Those 
specifically opposed to the workshop instruction were the guilds of 
fine mechanics and opticians, joiners, sculptors, and stucco workers, 1 
and potters. 2 The most pronounced opposition came from the 
association of fine mechanical and optical businesses in Munich. 
This association declared that the apprentice thinks the school 
instruction only is of much value; that the practical instruction 
is not comprehensive enough to be of much value; that the draw- 
ing is the only technical training given of much value; that the 
school has not the equipment to teach specialized machine work, 
as gear cutting; that first-rate practical teachers can not be secured 
by the schools at the low salaries they pay; and that, finally, the 
practical work of the school can never be equivalent to that of a 
commercial shop. 3 

The eyes of all Germany have been on the Munich schools and 
their workshops, and many men in industrial schools and in industry 
in other parts of Germany have well-developed opinions on the Mu- 
nich schools and have watched the results of their shops. The 
impression that has gone out does not seem, on the whole, to be 
favorable to the school shops. In the next chapter I shall discuss 
the general question of shops in the improvement schools; suffice it 
here to note some typical opinions on the Munich experiment. 4 
The Munich improvement schools are claimed to work in opposition, 
in many cases, to the training given by the masters, and to be regarded 
by the masters as not practical. The teachers are often primarily 
theoretical, and do not know thoroughly what they try to teach; 
and even when practical men, the school comes so to mold them that 
their teaching develops a theoretical tinge. The most extreme 
statement met was "the Munich experiment has failed, though 
some Munich masters approve of it." 5 

On the whole, the masters in Munich now approve of workshops in 
the schools, but only as aids to the theoretical instruction. As such 
aids they regard the school workshops as of proved value when in 
the hands of masters of their crafts. 6 They do not regard these 
shops as practicable substitutes for training in commercial shops, 
and do not desire them to become such. Thus the positive declara- 

' The representativeness of this view questioned by the school authorities. 

*JBeticht iiber Bewahrung. 

3 Ibid., pp. S, 9. 

« Also without discussing here any bias which the makers of these criticisms may have. 

» All of the views expressed in this paragraph are from chambers of industry or masters and guild members. 

• Handwerkskammer, Munchen. 



120 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

tion of the bookbinders' guild: "The school can never serve as a 
substitute for the workshop training." * They are opposed to the 
introduction of the so-called teaching workshops (Lehrwerkstatten), 
where a boy just out of common school is to learn his trade entirely, 
with no apprenticeship whatever. 2 

The school authorities, and especially Dr. Kerschensteiner, take 
these school workshops much more seriously. They may have no 
idea of altogether displacing apprenticeship, but they certainly aim 
not only to aid the theoretical instruction but to impart positive 
practical instruction also. The fact that in some of the schools they 
go systematically over those elementary operations of the trade 
which would be taught and practiced in all shops 3 indicates a more 
or less conscious endeavor to do what would probably be disclaimed 
were it put boldly: To teach the whole trade, and thus relieve the 
master of all burden of teaching his apprentice. This aim has cer- 
tainly taken possession of one school official whom I questioned and 
represents his view of the aim and function of the schools. One of 
the greatest difficulties to be faced, were such a tendency to continue, 
and the school shops to be efficient enough, would be the acceptance 
of this condition by the masters, and the gradual shifting to public 
shoulders of the teaching burden formerly borne by the employer. 
To reshift this burden back again, were that desired later, might 
prove much more difficult than its assumption. 

To the school authorities — which means primarily to Dr. Kerschen- 
steiner — the practical or workshop instruction is the base of the 
whole superstructure. 4 In it the interest of the pupils is to center 
(as it has largely done), and from it the theoretical instruction is to 
take meaning and shape. It is to be chief, though the masters 
would have it subordinate. And why this great emphasis on the 
school workshops ? The best reply is in Dr. Kerschensteiner's words: 

The essential reason why the continuation school should not become a purely 
theoretical school is that its limitation to theoretical instruction would, form an almost 
insuperable barrier to transforming our schools into educational institutions for com- 
munity life. 6 

Here we see again Dr. Kerschensteiner's philosophy of education. 
His basic purpose is not industrial, but ethical and civic. It is no part 
of my present purpose to evaluate these schools from the ethical and 
civic standpoint, supremely important though that be. The theory 
looks sound, and the prospects of its successful working out seem 
good. But in the process is there not great danger that, as in our 

1 Bericht liber Bewahrung, p. 1. 

2 Handwerkskammer, Miinchen. 

s Thus in the school described above, for fine mechanics. 

* Bericht iiber Bewahrung, p. 7. Kerschensteiner: The Continuation School in Munich. In Three 
Lectures, p. 19. 
5 Kerschensteiner: Continuation School, p. 28. 



THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS OF MUNICH. 121 

manual-training movement, the industrial results may become but 
slight and the whole movement be or become dominantly cultural? 

Of the journeymen and master courses and schools I need only say 
that they are quite satisfactory. Workshops in such schools are not 
subject to some of the difficulties that assail them in the improvement 
schools. Like more or less similar schools in the United States, these 
higher schools are generally recognized as efficient in their training of 
skilled journeymen, technicians, designers, foremen, and masters. 

Finally, the trade-improvement schools of Munich must be looked 
upon as an experiment not long enough established to have final judg- 
ment passed upon them. Their future development and results on 
industry will be of the greatest interest to those desirous of promoting 
industrial education and efficiency the world over. 



CHAPTER XII. 

RESULTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 

Having shown the organization and the workings of the industrial- 
school systems in three important centers, I shall turn now to the 
wider field embraced by all the cities in which I studied the industrial- 
education situation, and present certain results which have come from 
the schools in these cities, the attitude of the industrial employers to 
them, and certain problems which have arisen as to their most effi- 
cient working. The data contained in this chapter are derived from 
my inquiries of chambers of industry, school directors and teachers, 
and others. The statements as to the attitudes of employing masters 
are almost always made on the authority of the local chamber of 
industry, the body of all others best fitted by intimate knowledge of 
and relations to the masters of the district to represent their views. 
What, then, have been the results, up to the present time, of this 
extensive plant and patient effort ? Can we speak with assurance of 
these schools as institutions which have accomplished, in measure, 
that for which they were established ? 

In every city visited, and with regard to practically every school 
or set of schools of which the inquiry was made, the masters held that 
the industrial schools resulted in the training of better apprentices 
and more highly skilled workmen. These good results were not forth- 
coming in equal degree from all the schools. In general, the masters 
regard the results of the trade schools as superior to those of the 
improvement schools ; and the results of the more specialized improve- 
ment schools, called sometimes trade-improvement schools, as supe- 
rior to those more general in nature. The higher trade schools, again, 
are almost always spoken of with more enthusiasm and as showing 
more marked results in increased skill than the lower schools. This 
fact can be attributed to the greater age, maturity, and acquaintance 
with industry of their pupils, almost all of whom attend voluntarily, 
and thus only when they really desire to learn. The well-equipped 
shops in such schools may also explain their results in part. 

In many of the improvement schools it was stated that the schools 
stimulate the interest of the pupils in their work, but in others the 
qualification was made that this was true not of all the pupils, but 
merely of the better sort. Some of the pupils attend merely because 
they must and take but little interest in the school work. So far as 
the results on the interest of the pupils is concerned school workshops 
seem to be of advantage, though the added interest engendered by 
122 



RESULTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 123 

them in the school work may or may not in each case extend to the 
pupil's own shop. To the question if there was a special demand for 
pupils of the industrial schools the usual reply was: "Yes, where 
attendance is optional, but not where all the apprentices must attend." 
In a few cases it was stated that higher wages resulted from attend- 
ance on improvement schools; invariably this was the case with the 
higher trade schools. In Dresden an official of the Saxon ministry 
of the interior stated that the masters could turn out better work 
because of the training received in the schools by their workers. 

The journeymen's and masters' examinations are looked to by the 
masters and schoolmen as concrete evidences of proficiency. They 
give definiteness to the results of the industrial schools. In almost 
all the cities visited it was stated that the industrial schools had 
improved the journeyman's examination, and in a few cities that they 
had also resulted in better master's examinations. In a number of 
cases the improvement in the journeyman's examination was said 
to be due directly to the improvement school. I was told in several 
cities that the examinations were better in the city than in the coun- 
try. Part of this difference is due doubtless to the better industrial 
schools possessed by the cities. 

The industrial schools, as a whole, have a salutary influence on 
specialization. The improvement schools, whose results in this re- 
spect do not compare with those of the trade schools, influence special- 
ization chiefly by broadening the industrial outlook of the apprentices, 
giving them a more or less general understanding of the related 
branches of then trade. The trade schools, especially the higher 
ones, can and do as a rule teach enough of the practical as well as of 
the theoretical aspects of a whole trade or large branch to add greatly 
to the worker's industrial resource. As a result of the trade-school 
training, many workers are able, when necessity prompts, to learn 
more quickly than otherwise a related branch of their trade. 

The general attitude of the masters toward the industrial schools 
is, in every case of which I learned, favorable. The employers 
usually prefer trade (improvement or other) schools to the more 
general types of improvement schools. In most cities the masters 
prefer the city industrial to the guild schools. Many of these now 
no longer exist, having been taken over by the city or died a natural 
death when the city schools became compulsory. The masters are 
saved money by the city schools, which they formerly spent on the 
guild schools, which pleases them. In most cases they regard the 
city schools as equally efficient to the guild schools or nearly so. In 
Coblenz the masters have no special preference for the guild schools, 
if only they have control enough to insure that the instruction be 
practical; that is, adapted to the needs of industry. In two Saxon 
cities, however, Dresden and Chemnitz, the masters prefer the guild 



124 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

to the city schools. In Saxony the guild schools are numerous and 
important. 

Attendance on compulsory improvement schools is being more and 
more shifted to the daylight hours. The superior advantage of the 
daytime to the evening for courses of this sort is intensified by the 
compulsory nature of the attendance. If all those between certain 
ages and engaged in industry and commerce are required to attend 
evening classes, as was the case throughout much of Germany till 
recently, certainly many will be present hi the schools whose interest 
and endurance does not permit them to benefit from the extra tasks 
at the close of the day. Such has been German experience, and con- 
sequently we find compulsory improvement school classes shifted 
ever more and more into the circle of the hours of the working day, 
however closely guarded by employers. The reader who sees state- 
ments concerning some German schools, that they have no classes in 
the evening, should realize that by this the Germans understand 
not later than 8 p. m. 

The attitude of the masters toward compulsory day attendance of 
apprentices and other youthful workers on improvement schools 
varies greatly between the cities visited, and somewhat between the 
several trades. In the earlier days of compulsion the initiative in 
securing legislation was usually taken by others than the masters, 
and the masters were in most cases opposed. In the last few years, 
since the experiment has proved useful to industry in many parts of 
Germany, the masters have in some cases even taken the initiative 
in seeking to establish compulsory attendance. 1 The attitudes vary 
from strong opposition, as in Dresden and Chemnitz, through the 
several stages of opposition, as in Barmen, Elberfeld, and Dortmund, 
to toleration, as in Berlin, Frankfort on Mam, and Dusseldorf; to 
approval, as in Magdeburg, Leipzig, Munich, Coblenz, and Duisburg; 
to special desire for compulsory attendance, as in Plauen, Essen, 2 and 
Aachen (Aix la Chapelle) . It must not be understood that all masters 
or even most masters in all trades agree in their attitude; the above 
statements indicate merely the general reaction to compulsory attend- 
ance. In Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Barmen, and Dortmund it was 
specifically stated that the masters were not in entire agreement 
among themselves as to their attitude, and that in Elberfeld and 
Dusseldorf there was no unanimity at all on the matter. I need not 
here repeat what was stated in another chapter concerning the differ- 
ence of attitude of masters in different trades in Hamburg, 3 which 

i As in Plauen, in Saxony, and Essen. The handwork masters of Essen petitioned the mayor, July 18, 
1910, asking that after Apr. 1, 1911, the city authorities extend the (improvement) school compulsion to 
all the apprentices of those trades whose guilds request such action for them. Denkschrift des Essener 
Handwerks, 1910, p. 13. 

2 The Essen masters oppose that provision of the local ordinance which requires the employers to pay 
their boys' tuition in the compulsory school. Ordinarily, though, they shift this to their apprentices. 

* Cf. pp. 94-95, ch. 9. 



RESULTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 125 

applies in greater or less degree throughout Germany, except to say 
that trades which receive the greatest benefit from industrial schools 
are among those which are most favorable to compulsory attendance, 
except where the disturbance to the shop work is greatest. In such 
case, as in some highly skilled machine industries, the great disturb- 
ance to the work often outweighs, in the mind of the employer, the 
admittedly great benefit of the technical training. The disturbance 
of work is generally greatest in the small shops, and for them, as for 
the larger shops, is generally lessened by allowing them to send the 
apprentices at different times. In general the tendency is toward the 
change of opposition into toleration, and toleration into appro\ al, as 
the masters observe the results of the school training on their 
apprentices. 

In Duisburg, Cref eld, and Aachen the voluntary industrial improve- 
ment school, which had preceded the present compulsory school, 
resulted in better average work than the present school, because most 
of those who attended the voluntary school were serious and earnest. 
The masters in these cities prefer the present schools notwithstanding, 
for they benefit a larger number of boys. 1 

More and more also the masters are coming to prefer day to evening 
instruction. The tendency in this direction is not as yet marked, 
but it is undoubted. In Plauen, for example, the masters sought to 
have the improvement-school instruction given in the daytime, 
chiefly because they regarded such instruction as much more efficient 
than that given in the evening. The Leipzig masters prefer the 
morning to the afternoon hours, if there is to be day instruction at all, 
for in the morning the boys are fresher and learn better. In Munich 
and in Frankfort on the Main much of the instruction in the indus- 
trial improvement school is given in the morning, to the satisfaction 
of the masters. In the Frankfort Industrial School, 2 in the decade 
1890-1900, before compulsory attendance was initiated, the director 
tried experiments in the hours of instruction. He offered courses 
first from 8 to 9 p. m., then alternative courses from 7 to 9, then 
from 5 to 7, then morning courses. Many of the employers, as these 
courses were successively offered, sent their apprentices to the earlier 
courses. 3 

In general, the attitude of employers to compulsory attendance of 
unskilled workers is much less favorable than in the case of appren- 
tices, chiefly because what they learn is more general than industrial 
in nature, and their industries neither feel the need of nor can greatly 
benefit by this training. Nowhere did I find this spirit so marked 

i Though the voluntary industrial improvement school in Aachen had at times an attendance of 4,000 
to 7,000. 

2 A voluntary school for apprentices and journeymen, attendance on which, to those boys who meet 
special qualifications, frees them from the necessity of attending the industrial improvement school. 

8 Herr Direktor Back, of Frankfort Gewerbeschule. 



126 GEBMAN INDUSTKIAL EDUCATION. 

as in the Ruhr Valley, tributary to the lower Rhine, and the seat of 
great coal mines, iron smelters, and steel mills. Here the proportion 
of workers classed as unskilled (ungelernte) is very high; in the 
Krupp works, for example, 75 per cent or higher. 1 In Essen com- 
pulsory attendance has only been initiated since 1910, and there the 
Krupp firm, though approving of the compulsion for their appren- 
tices, is very doubtful whether it will be worth what it costs the 
firm for the unskilled workers. They are, it was declared, many of 
them dull, and not a picked lot like the apprentices. In Duisburg 
the factory owners are opposed to compulsory attendance of their 
unskilled workers, and the same attitude is characteristic of the coal, 
iron and steel, and similar industries throughout the region. 

The problem of securing suitable teachers for the industrial schools 
is one of the most difficult with which the school authorities have to 
deal and is not fully solved as yet. This problem exists both in 
the improvement and in the higher trade schools, though the latter 
schools are nearer to its solution than the improvement schools. 
Theoretical subjects, such as arithmetic, bookkeeping, physics, and 
the general studies of industry have been taught almost universally 
by common-school teachers in the improvement schools. The mas- 
ters are generally fairly well satisfied to have this class of teachers 
for the theoretical or book subjects. That they have in most cases 
no improvement to offer to the use of professional teachers for theo- 
retical subjects is indicated by the fact that in guild schools in Dres- 
den, where the masters have an entirely free hand to pick the teachers 
which suit them best, all the theoretical instruction is given by 
common-school teachers of the city. In Magdeburg and Chemnitz, 
however, the masters wish to have practical men, preferably masters 
working at their trades, impart the theoretical instruction. 

Quite different is the problem for teachers for practical or definitely 
trade subjects, such as trade drawing, study of materials, and all 
workshop instruction. Skilled practical artisans, when otherwise 
qualified, have generally been sought to teach these subjects. Ina- 
bility to secure enough such men has required the turning of common- 
school and other professional teachers to these branches also. To do 
this they prepare themselves in commercial workshops or in indus- 
trial schools (usually higher trade schools). Their teaching, how- 
ever, of the distinctly trade subjects has been on the whole quite 
unsatisfactory to the masters. They stated that these teachers did 
not understand fully what they tried to teach, and that their teaching 
often ran in opposition to the teaching in the employers' shops. 
As a result of such criticism by the employers, the tendency is quite 
general to secure practical men for the practical subjects wherever 
possible. The present status may be realized by the statement that 

1 An engineer of the company. 



EESULTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 127 

of 14 of the cities visited, the teachers of trade or practical subjects 
were but few of them practical men in 3 cases, chiefly practical men 
in 6, and all of this class in 5 cases. 1 Of 13 cities where data on this 
point were secured, in 2 the masters (the opinion voiced generally by 
the chamber of industry) professed not to be satisfied, in 4 to be sat- 
isfied in part, and in 7 to be quite well satisfied 2 with the sort of 
teachers in the industrial schools. Most of the cases of satisfaction 
were in cities where all the trade instruction was given by practical 
men. 

In some cases, as in Cologne, professional teachers with practical 
experience (as for a year) in handwork are satisfactory to the mas- 
ters. Elsewhere the ideal is stricter. Thus the handworkers of 
Essen ask that the instruction in the improvement school in each 
trade be limited to study of the trade, trade drawing, arithmetic 
and principles of bookkeeping, civics, and business composition (not 
omission of workshop instruction), and that all of these subjects, 
except the civics and business composition, be taught by suitable 
teachers of the trade, trained in a (special) course. 3 In Magdeburg 
the head of the trade and industrial schools stated that not only are 
professional teachers not in close enough relations with industry to 
teach in a practical way, but that practical men who devote them- 
selves solely to teaching get out of touch with industry, and their 
teaching becomes less practical. All, he said, should be working in 
commercial shops during the same period that they are teaching. 4 

It has proved very difficult to secure skilled practical men who are 
also well fitted to teach. In some few cases, as in Magdeburg, men 
have been secured with both qualifications; but in most cities it has 
been found necessary or desirable to require the practical men to 
study teaching principles and methods in a special class established 
for them, either before beginning teaching or during their term of 
service. In Frankfort the director of the industrial improvement 
school stated that the masters without special theoretical training are 
unable to give the proper trade instruction, and that they themselves 
recognize this inability. 15 Frankfort had in session while I was in the 
city a course of four weeks' length which was attended by industrial- 
school teachers from all over the Rhine Valley. Dortmund has a simi- 
lar course for the populous district of the lower Rhine. 

The difficulty of securing skilled artisans for trade teaching, on 
account of the low salary paid in the schools, is also a real one. Some 

1 Few in Berlin, Elberfeld, Duisburg: most in Hamburg, Munich, Manheim, Cologne, Dortmund, 
Aachen; all in Plauen, Frankfort on the Main, Coblenz, Barmen, and Miinchen-Gladbach. 

* Quite well satisfied in Plauen, Frankfort on the Main, Cologne, Elberfeld, Barmen, Dortmund, and 
Miinchen-Gladbach. 

3 Denkscbrift des Essener Handwerks, 1910, p. 11. 

* Stadtschulrat Dr. Francke. 

* Direktor Neuschafer. 



128 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

men in industry, as the guild of fine mechanics in Munich, claim that 
the low wage keeps out all thoroughly skilled men. Elsewhere it was 
learned that though the salary is not what a skilled master, engineer, 
or other skilled practical man can earn in his prime, yet the security 
of the school position (after a year of probation) and the retiring 
pension which is granted in most cities enables the schools to secure 
men who can earn for the time being sometimes far more outside. 
Much of the teaching is also supplementary work, carried on for a few 
hours daily, with but little disturbance to the teacher's outside 
occupation. 

In the higher trade schools the quality of the teachers, as is to be 
expected, averages higher than in the improvement schools, and there 
is usually but little criticism of the class of teachers engaged. Skilled 
artisans or engineers almost always give the theoretical instruction, 
while the practical is imparted by artists, engineers, architects, and 
the best professional teachers. 

The problem of workshops in the industrial schools is one of the 
most important, if not now the most important, of all the present 
problems of these schools. The greatest variety of practice and aim 
is found with regard to school shops. In the higher trade schools 
workshops are the rule. In the lower trade schools also they very 
frequently exist. Such schools are intermediate in this respect to 
the higher trade and the improvement schools. In the improvement 
schools we find no workshops in some cities, as Berlin and Coblenz, 
and, in general, throughout Prussia. In Dusseldorf there are shops 
in the improvement schools for most of the trades, and in Munich 
every industrial improvement school has a shop. In most of the cities 
where I inquired as to this point the improvement schools have a few, 
but only a few, shops. 1 

In practically all improvement schools, whether there were shops 
or not, there were more or less models and demonstrating apparatus. 
The trades for which these few shops were established were always 
from the same small group: Confectioners and pastry cooks (con- 
ditorei), barbers, tailors, bookbinders, and printers. These trades are 
those in which the maximum advantage is gained from school shops 
for the minimum cost, and are also some of those where the masters 
especially desire shops in the improvement schools. 

Workshops are quite generally desired in the higher trade schools. 
The great point at issue is whether workshops are desirable in the 
improvement schools. Of the cities visited, the masters in Leipzig, 
Plauen, Munich, Cologne, and Dusseldorf wish plenty of workshops, 
or more than they now have. In practically all other cities visited 
the masters desire only a few workshops in the improvement schools, 

i Chemnitz and Plauen in Saxony, Magdeburg, Cologne, Elberfeld, Barmen, and Dortmund in Prussia. 



RESULTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 129 

or none at all. In most cases a few are desired, as for the trades above 
mentioned. In a few cities, as Barmen and Elberfeld — strictly factory 
cities — the cost of school shops is a main objection. This high cost, 
which is generally admitted to be inseparable from most sorts of shops, 
constitutes an objection, even in places where more shops are desired, 
as in Plauen. In the main, however, cost of shops does not prevent 
then- presence where they are greatly desired. 

But they are not in most cases greatly desired. The attitude of 
the masters in Munich may be recalled. There is a party among 
educators who wish to have workshops in the improvement schools 
and train the pupils practically as well as theoretically. The extrem- 
ists of this party wish ultimately to relieve the masters of most or all 
of the training of their apprentices, and to shift the burden to the 
school. The masters, almost to a man, are opposed to any such 
procedure. Thus the handworkers of Essen, in a memorial to the 
mayor, say: "The improvement school has the task of extending the 
workshop training and not of displacing it." And again: "The 
school instruction must follow the order of progress of the apprentice 
in his shop step for step." 1 The fear of some that more school work- 
shops may lead to the teaching workshop (Lehrwerkstatt), which may 
become a substitute for apprenticeship, has led the masters in some 
cities to oppose the school shops more than they otherwise would. 2 
And such attitudes are held, despite the realization of many masters 
that the school shops shift from their shoulders some of the teaching 
burden. 

The reason for this opposition to school shops is in part that the 
teachers in these shops in some cases are men not practically trained. 
If all workshop teachers were practical men, there would be less 
objection by employers to school shops. In Barmen and Elberfeld 
one chief reason for opposition to school shops is the fear of conflict 
between teacher and master, such as is claimed by some observers to 
exist in Munich. But most of the shop teachers are now practical 
men, and their proportion is increasing. Neither large cost nor the 
kind of teachers accounts for most of the opposition to school shops, 
though each contributes its influence. 

The main objection to shops in the improvement schools is that 
they are of little use during the first year or two of apprenticeship. 
The average boy of 14 and 15, not yet much versed in the ways of 
industry in general and of his own in particular, can not, it is claimed, 

1 " The first year it should help the apprentice to find himself in his new environment— the shop, to recog- 
nize the tools and materials by name, form, purpose, and differences, and to comprehend the single process 
according to their order and to grasp the necessity of this order. The second year the emphasis should be 
on individual and more difficult (as mechanical) tools, properties of the chief materials, and working experi- 
ences. In the third year the goal should be set of giving the pupils a survey of the different spheres of 
work of their trade."— Denkschrift des Essener Handwerks, 1910, pp. 10, 14. 

' As in Duisburg and Magdeburg. 

88740°— 13 9 



130 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

benefit to any considerable extent from workshop training. If their 
first approach to practical work be in the school shop, they may 
become trained in habits unsuited to practical work if not actually 
harmful. Thus few schools can, and still fewer do, pay such close 
attention to economy of materials as commercial shops do from force 
of necessity. A habit of prodigality with materials may become 
ingrained in an apprentice from his school experience and be very 
hard to uproot. Most boys of 14 and 15 are not yet serious and 
interested enough to secure the good from school shops which such 
shops should give. And, finally, if there be one maxim more than 
another on which practically the whole structure of German industrial 
education rests, it is that some practical training in actual commercial 
work shall precede industrial school training. 

In the case of the theoretical training of the first year of the 
improvement schools, this maxim is modified by substituting " accom- 
panying" for "preceding," and some exceptions are found elsewhere 
in the system, as in the higher technical training in the technical high 
schools. For almost all grades and kinds of industrial training, how- 
ever, the maxim is followed. Adherence to this idea is one of the 
keystones of Germany's success in industrial education. Whatever 
reason there is for its modification with regard to the first theoretical 
training of the improvement schools, there is less reason in the case 
of the shop training. For this can be secured in the shop of the mas- 
ter; the theoretical training generally can not be. The masters, as a 
rule, feel perfectly well able to instruct their apprentices adequately 
in the practical work of their trades; not so with regard to the theory. 
The theoretical background, now so necessary for proficiency, few 
masters have the time and many have not the ability to impart 
adequately. The masters quite generally recognize this fact and call 
consequently for specialized theoretical trade training in the improve- 
ment schools. 

In many cases the masters may not give adequate practical instruc- 
tion to their apprentices, due to specialization; but such specializa- 
tion does not exist to the extent that it does in the United States. 
Further, it is very doubtful how far shops in improvement schools can 
correct such specialization. Though the improvement schools tend 
toward this end even when lacking shops, and doubtless in greater 
degree when they have shops, yet the higher trade schools have most 
effect of this sort. Both for results on specialization and for general 
efficiency shops during the last year or two of improvement school 
courses are much more likely to be fruitful than those during the first 
year or two. 

In the higher trades schools, workshops are desired chiefly not to 
furnish the basic training in the trade, but to give opportunity for 



RESULTS OF THE INDUSTRIAL SCHOOLS. 131 

experimentation, working out new designs, learning of new or un- 
usual machines, and the like. The school shop is in no danger in 
Germany of usurping the place of the commercial shop. 

A director of the chamber of industry in Aachen made some signi- 
ficant criticisms of the industrial schools. He said that the school 
men try to include too much in the improvement school, especially 
too much theoretical instruction. Theory the masters must have, but 
they think that the period of apprenticeship is only the beginning of 
the worker's industrial education. The school men think of it 
largely as the conclusion, and therefore crowd exchange, study of 
industry, bookkeeping, etc., all into three years. With regard to 
school shops, he said that some trades or processes could be taught 
in them, others not. Wrought-iron working and saddlery could not 
well be taught in school shops. In some trades, as that of cabinet- 
making, some processes could be taught, others not. Thus, inlaying 
can best be taught in school, for the master has not the long time 
required; and also planing, sawing, and the like, but not the making 
of a chair or table. 

A peculiar and significant method of practical training is followed 
in the industrial improvement school of Frankfort on the Main. The 
school has no workshops, and none are desired. The great cost of 
workshops is not the reason for their absence. Theoretical training 
is chiefly desired, but practical training is also obtained by a peculiar 
cooperation between masters and school. The pupils are assigned 
by their industrial teachers practical tasks — for example, in the first 
year of woodworking, joints in wood. These they must make in their 
master's workshops and bring to school. The school will supply mate- 
rials, or pay the master their cost if he so requires, but ordinarily he 
does not do so. The pupils usually do these tasks during working 
hours, but the longer ones are sometimes done after working hours. 

In general, all classes favor the industrial schools. The workmen 
warmly approve them. Though their expense is great they have 
won a place so high that support is as a rule, freely granted to them. 
These statements apply to the cities and not necessarily to the coun- 
try. In the country the benefits to be secured, number of workers 
considered, are not so great, and the cost per pupil is greater. Con- 
sequently the country industrial schools are backward as compared 
with the city schools. 

To sum up: The German industrial schools are achieving in large 
measure the purpose for which they were established — industrial 
efficiency. They are not yet through developing, nor are their types 
finally fixed. They constitute a living, growing movement, which 
gives every promise of increasing in fruitful results on industry and 
thus on the comfort and culture of the German people. 



PART III. CONCLUSION. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR OUR INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 

The best training now provided for industrial workers other than 
those definitely preparing for supervisory and technicians' posts, is 
probably that imparted in a few comparatively large factories 
where an enlightened and progressive policy of industrial training 
holds, and where apprenticeship and a factory school cooperate in 
supplying it. Such are the schools of the General Electric Co., 
Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Co., and Baldwin Locomotive Works, 
in this country, and Siemens & Halske Co. in Germany. Such training 
we have seen is unfortunately feasible in but few cases. Excellent 
though this partial solution to the problem is, it does nothing for 
the mass of our industrial workers. 

My inquiries into German industrial training have led me to wish 
that our own country had not allowed apprenticeship to go into 
such a decline, and to seek for its revival. Wasteful though the old 
apprenticeship was of the apprentice's time and effort, apprentice- 
ship in its newer forms, both in Germany and the United States, has 
in it much of promise for the future training of industrial workers. 
It is the main reliance as we have seen of Germany in her industrial 
training, the industrial schools being but supplementary. A visit to 
Germany is an excellent corrective to the one-sided view often found 
in our country, which seeks to displace the shop by the industrial 
school. 

Is it not possible to bring about a revival of apprenticeship in this 
country? It is undoubtedly desirable. No better way, or even as 
good, has yet been devised for the main training of the mass of indus- 
trial workers than in the shops where they are employed and by those 
who supervise their work. This statement holds of almost all 
industries, despite the ravages of specialization. Government action 
(State) might aid in bringing about the wider practice of appren- 
ticeship. Apprentice laws, such as those "of the German Empire, 
might be adopted by the States; or less detailed and thorough laws 
involving the minimum of Government action in the matter and the 
maximum of private initiative consistent with the purpose to be 
attained. But we must not deceive ourselves into thinking that 

133 



134 GEBMAK INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

legislation alone can increase the practice of apprenticeship to any 
marked degree. Apprenticeship will grow in this country only if 
there is increased demand for it by boys (and girls) who enter indus- 
tries, by their parents, and also by employers. Many or most employ- 
ers, though desirous of obtaining plenty of skilled labor, are all too 
ready, on account chiefly of the exigencies of competition, to avoid 
the burden of training workers efficiently. 

If those exigencies be so modified by law that all employers alike 
must pay in the first instance the cost of adequate training of any 
youthful workers whom they may employ as apprentices, then 
burdens on the employers will not be serious. Firms employing 
bona fide apprentices to-day find that their apprenticeship system 
pays, and indeed were it not so they would scarcely continue the 
system. In Germany apprentices are regarded as paying, and often 
as indispensable. This is in part so because adjustments have taken 
place there, such as would also occur here, placing on consumers or 
on the apprentices a portion at least of any undue burden at first 
borne by any particular class or group of employers. The burden 
might be shifted to consumers in part by raising the prices of products, 
but this tendency could have but a limited play, because of the 
tendency of demand to decrease with rise of price. Whatever 
expense or other burden is incident to the training of apprentices by 
their employers, being inseparable from and incurred only by their 
employment, would tend to be charged against the value of their 
services. The net or true value of their services to their employers 
would thus be the measure of the wages payable to them. This net 
value of the apprentice's service is usually very small at first; it 
increases at an accelerated rate, and sometimes at the close of an 
apprenticeship is almost as great as that of a journeyman. Thus 
any cost or burden of apprentice training by employers is likely 
generally to rest chiefly on the apprentices, in the form of lower 
wage than they could secure were they not learners as well as workers. 
The small wages which employers can pay apprentices constitute, 
as we have seen, a serious hindrance to the choice of apprenticeships 
by parents and boys, especially the latter. This hindrance can be 
overcome only by education as to the value of skill to the worker. 

Apprenticeship, then, from the employers' standpoint, already 
pays some American employers, and can be made with appropriate 
laws equalizing competitive conditions in this respect to pay employ- 
ers generally. Notwithstanding this prospect, a marked demand for 
apprenticeship is much more likely to come from the boys and girls and 
their parents than from employers. 

In what way, then, if at all, is the demand for apprenticeship on 
the part of industrial workers to be greatly stimulated ? For answer, 
I believe that the movement for vocational guidance now springing 



SUGGESTIONS FOE OUR INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 135 

up in the United States, and with every prospect of rapid spread, is 
likely to serve as the needed educator and stimulator of demand for 
apprenticeship. Vocational guidance is not the choice of a vocation 
for a child, nor the securing of a position for him, though free employ- 
ment agencies are sometimes closely linked with the movement. It is 
the aiding of parents and child, by wisely selected data and sympa- 
thetic insight into the child's tastes and capacities, to choose wisely 
a vocation for him or her and to take the proper steps to prepare for 
it. The extent of this very young movement may be gathered from 
the facts that "movements to promote vocational guidance have 
been undertaken in New York, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Phila- 
delphia, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and several other cities," and that 
"the national conference on vocational guidance, held in Boston on 
November 15 and 16, 1910, was attended' by delegates from 35 
cities." 1 

Apprenticeship has declined in recent years for two chief reasons: 
The employers in many cases refused to accept apprentices or made 
of their so-called apprenticeship a pretext for unskilled child labor, 
and the children (or their parents for them) refused to enter appren- 
ticeships in view of the lower beginning wage secured there than in 
unskilled work. To minimize the latter cause is one of the chief 
aims of the vocational guidance movement. One of the fundamen- 
tal failures of our present system is an ignorance of industrial facts 
on the part of many workers and their children and their short- 
sighted choice of occupations, .almost regardless of the future. A 
dollar spent now in furthering this movement, designed to aid in 
every feasible way right choice by children and parents of a voca- 
tion, is likely to be of more value than several dollars spent in fully 
equipped and expensive trade schools. 

Increased demand by workers alone for apprenticeship will not 
suffice to insure its real increase. Many boys now enter shops or 
factories as "apprentices" only to find that they have been misled 
and exploited, and are not really being taught a trade, or even a full 
branch of one. Such cases point to the legitimate function of the 
State and the way in which law can improve the prospects of appren- 
ticeship. A thoroughly good and modern apprentice law can regulate 
the conditions of entrance upon and of leaving an apprenticeship, can 
say who may take and who teach apprentices, can protect both 
employer and apprentice against breach of contract or other illegal 
action by the other, and can insure that the training shall be ade- 
quate, so far as the degree of specialization in each shop and other 
conditions permit. The main function of such a law is to protect 
both parties, and chiefly the apprentice, in actually obtaining what 

1 25th An. Rept. Com'r of Labor, Ch. XV, Vocational Guidance, pp. 411, 412. Also to be mentioned on 
this movement is: Meyer Bloomfield— The Vocational Guidance of Youth, 1911. 



136 GEKMAN INDUSTKIAL EDUCATION. 

he seeks and what is claimed to be offered him. 1 Manifestly the exe- 
cution of such a law requires dealing in technical matters, which is 
best treated by experts. For this reason semiofficial administrative 
bodies, made up of employers or of employers and employees, and 
established in the chief industrial cities or districts of each State, 
would be of great public service. The chambers of industry of Ger- 
many give us the object lesson as to what such bodies can do for 
industry; we may readily establish similar bodies, modified so far as 
seem desirable to meet our special needs and ideals. Thus to suit our 
more democratic practice and ideals, the employees might well be 
given a larger voice in such bodies than is the case in Germany; and 
indeed it is unlikely that organized labor would support such a plan 
were this not done. The German guilds again show us what local 
employers' associations, such as now exist widely in the United 
States, can do to further apprenticeship and aid State and chamber 
of industry in the efficient regulation of employers and apprentices 
alike. 

Revival of apprenticeship alone will not solve the problem, and 
this chiefly for two reasons: One is the great need for technical 
knowledge in modern industry; the other is specialization. The need 
for technical knowledge can be best met in industrial schools. Spe- 
cialization in industry is a much harder problem to deal with. It is, 
wherever present, the weak spot of apprenticeship. The Germans, 
with all their traditional allegiance to apprenticeship and well- 
rounded trade training, have been forced to capitulate with specializa- 
tion. Their National Industrial Law declares that a master must 
train his apprentice in the whole trade for which he is apprenticed, 
so far as that is carried on in the master's shop. Much one-sided train- 
ing results, which the schools correct in part by a broader view, and 
sometimes by broader shop practice. At best, specialization now 
permanently with us tends, with all its high efficiency, toward weaken- 
ing narrowness for the specialized worker. What we should strive for 
is such broadening industrial training as will supplement the nar- 
rower range of skill and knowledge and give the specialized worker 
greater resource. Specialization is probably more widespread in the 
United States than in Germany, and this constitutes an added need 
which we have for industrial education greater than that present and 
recognized in Germany. 

Industrial schools, then, we must have, and in far greater numbers, 
to meet the needs of far more workers than at present. Otherwise 
we can make little claim to really popular education of the sort closest 
to the worker's activities. Our citizens are already stirred to the 

1 Wisconsin passed, June 15, 1911, an admirable and truly modern apprenticeship law. This law is of 
such great significance for apprenticeship in this country that it is given in full in Appendix B. The re- 
sults of this law, modeled on German experience, and to be studied in connection with the Wisconsin com- 
pulsory improvement school law of 1911 (the text of which is given at the close of that of the apprenticeship 
law) are of great interest to those concerned with the problems of apprenticeship and industrial education. 



SUGGESTIONS FOE OUR INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 137 

need for industrial education, as attested by a number of new schools 
recently founded by public funds, and numerous State commissions 
on the subject. Soon there will be much money spent on industrial 
schools; and when the American people want something badly, for 
public or private purposes, they spend money freely. There will be 
much opportunity for wasting of public funds by unwise choice of 
the kind of schools to be established and supported. What kind of 
schools, then, should we develop ? 

The present is a period of experimentation in industrial education 
in Europe, and even more so in this country. The nature of the 
subject is such that theorizing is relatively lacking in significance; 
experience is the safest guide. It is for this reason chiefly that 
German experience, probably the ripest and most fruitful in this 
field of any country, is of so much importance. We must speak 
cautiously as yet, till our experience be fuller, and must be content 
in large part to follow the method of experimentation. We must 
try all things, prove that which is good. Our country is so vast, and 
so varied in its industries, that there may well be considerable differ- 
ences in the schools best suited to each section. Yet the types of 
school are likely to be the same throughout the country, and possibly 
'so throughout the world. The needs of different industries, and even 
more of different pecuniary classes of workers, are likely to cause 
even greater differences in the kinds of schools desirable. We must 
have a number of different kinds of schools, and no amount of plan- 
ning will enable us to forsee all the special and local modifications that 
may with advantage arise. 

The kinds of industrial schools divide themselves according to 
categories as fundamental as any into whole-time day schools and 
part-time schools (day or evening). The importance of this distinc- 
tion arises from the limitations to the number of workers who can 
afford to attend the whole- time schools. Possibly at least 30 per 
cent of the rank and file of workers in our great industrial centers 
can not, as judged by severe standards of living, afford to keep their 
children in day school any longer than the law requires. 1 A larger 
number think themselves unable; others do not think longer school 
attendance worth while, and thus add to the number of those who, 
by reason of choice or necessity, will not attend schools that keep 
them from earning. We can not predict the proportion that will 
attend day industrial schools; we may assume that it would be 
more than those who now attend the day schools beyond the legal 
requirement, but we may be sure that it would be but a small pro- 
portion of all industrial workers. German experience bears this out. 
We are richer per capita and more of our industrial workers may 
for that reason attend such schools than in Germany. 

1 Cf. ch. 4, pp. 44-45. 



138 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

Numerous questions arise with respect to these schools. Shall 
they be primarily trade schools, aiming to teach the practice as well 
as theory of the trades, or primarily general industrial schools, giv- 
ing only a preliminary training before entrance on apprenticeship? 
Trade schools have so far been the commoner in the United States. 
Though useful in their sphere, they are subject to serious objections 
not applying to other types of schools in anything like the same 
degree. They are very expensive. They usually teach but few 
trades, and can not teach many without a very great investment in 
plant, nor can they teach many trades economically without many 
students. They are subject, with probably no considerable justifi- 
cation in the cases of most, but still subject more than are other 
types of industrial schools, to trades-union suspicion. To teach a 
whole trade, they must keep the student three or four years usually, 
without wage, and even then he must usually serve a year or more 
as apprentice before becoming a journeyman. Certain phases of 
trade training, as learning economy of materials, acquiring speed, 
and numerous others in which few school shops can be fully adjusted 
to practical trade needs, make the school training no sufficient sub- 
stitute for shop training. Certain of these difficulties are elastic; 
they can be and have been overcome, but at best the trade schoof 
which acts wholly or chiefly as a substitute for apprenticeship, as 
ours in the United States do or aim to do, forces itself into the sphere 
in which schools are weakest and commercial shops are strongest. 
The stronghold of the commercial shop is practical trade training; 
that of the industrial school is technical training. Each can under- 
take the functions in which the other excels, but with the risk of poor 
results, or what is tantamount, good results achieved at too great 
cost. , Thus technical training is imparted to advantage in but few 
factories aside from the use of school methods, including the hiring 
of a special teacher or the turning of the energies of an official largely 
to the work of a teacher. Our trade schools in this country, in turn, 
have sometimes not been very practical, and this often because they 
used school to the exclusion of shop methods. The cost of trade 
schools is considerable, exceeding that of most other types of indus- 
trial schools chiefly in the item of equipment. 1 In addition to this 
cost, the total cost of trade school training should include the wages 
foregone by the pupil during the course. The sum of these costs has 
been great both in mass and also per pupil. 

1 Our data on costs of American industrial schools are very inadequate. An article by H. C. Brandon: 
"The cost of industrial education in the United States: A study of fifty typical schools," in Teachers Col- 
lege Record, September, 1911, reveals the confusion in the available data from school reports. It shows 
far greater variation in costs as between individual schools of a given type than between the median costs 
of different types of schools. The median cost of industrial education in all types of schools is found to be 
(exclusive of the important element of first cost of building and equipment) S4.S0 per pupil per month 
(based on enrollment), with a median variation of 126 per cent from the median. This figure may be 
compared with the cost (also excluding first cost of equipment) of $3.20 per pupil per month (based on 
average daily attendance) in common schools, as stated by Prof. Strayer in "City school expenditures." 
and quoted by Mr. Brandon. 



SUGGESTIONS FOR OUR INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 139 

That boys and young men have entered and completed such schools 
at all testifies to the difficulty of securing adequate trade training 
otherwise and to the thoroughness of the school training in some 
cases. Specialization is largely responsible for the need for such 
schools. The greater degree of specialization in the United States 
differentiates our situation from that of Germany. For this reason 
we need more trade schools, or other schools imparting practical 
training, than does Germany. But it would be a great mistake to 
rush pell-mell into establishing trade schools for this reason without 
thorough investigation in each instance. The main task of practical 
instruction in industry is best fulfilled by employers. 

The cause of practical industrial education would be forwarded by 
enacting and enforcing suitable apprenticeship laws, by bringing 
about cooperation between trade associations and the State for the 
regulation of apprenticeship, by aiding every effort of the vocational 
guidance movement, or otherwise to promote intelligent and far- 
sighted choice of occupation, and by providing cheaper and more 
effective schools for supplementing the practical training to be 
received in commercial shops and factories. 

There is danger that the several States and communities of the 
United States will waste much mone}^ on industrial education; waste 
by expending great sums which will bring much less return than if 
spent otherwise, but with the same general aim of bettering industrial 
training. The greatest caution is imperative in considering the need 
and probable results and counting the cost in each specific case before 
increasing the number of trade schools. The trade schools that appear 
to give the greatest promise of success, both results and cost being con- 
sidered, are those which might be classed as higher trade schools, 
designed primarily for the further education of such mechanics as 
offer themselves, having first learned and practiced their trades. But 
elementary day trade schools can not, I believe, be satisfactory as 
our main dependence for industrial education of the masses. 

No sharp line differentiates general industrial from trade schools. 
But the types are different. The general industrial schools are much 
more feasible than elementary trade schools and, for the mass of 
workers, more serviceable than any form of trade school. Their 
course is generally shorter than that of a trade school, their training 
less specialized for distinct trades. So far as such schools have been 
established in the United States, which has been but a few years, 
they have no great number of branches or departments of training. 
In time they will probably develop more branches of training than 
the trade schools teach trades, for their training is less elaborate and 
expensive than that of the trade schools. 

Much of the need for such general industrial or preparatory indus- 
trial schools has been taken up in chapters 2, 3, and 4. No school 
in Germany corresponds exactly to these schools, though some 



140 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

trade schools approximate them. We have greater need than Ger- 
many for such schools. One of the greatest differences between the 
two industrial training situations in the two countries is that in Ger- 
many most boys and girls, whether entering skilled or unskilled in- 
dustries, go to work at the age of 14, while in the United States few 
employers will accept apprentices for the skilled trades younger than 
16. The German practice has become so rooted in habit that the 
Germans neither ordinarily question its expediency, nor do they 
generally give very definite reasons for the existence of the custom. 
Poverty is doubtless largely responsible for it, and in this respect 
we probably have the advantage. Probably a larger number of our 
families can afford to keep their boys from work until they are 15 or 
16, if they consider this worth while, than in Germany. This possi- 
bility is to be regarded as a national asset. The question then 
arises: What shall be done with the years between 14 and 16 of 
those who leave the common school at the earlier age, and enter the 
skilled trades? The preparatory industrial school suggests an an- 
swer applicable to many boys and girls. A much larger number of 
boys and girls will probably be able and willing to attend a general 
industrial school for one or two years between the time when they 
leave the common school and the entry on apprenticeship in a skilled 
trade than would be able and wilhng to make the sacrifice for a longer 
trade-school training. Such attendance will cost both them and the 
public less than trade-school training, but will doubtless give the 
sort of practical as well as theoretical training which broadens the 
industrial outlook of the pupils and makes them familiar with the 
elements both of the theory and practice of a broad range of opera- 
tions. Shops will be found in such schools though not necessarily 
such complex shops as in trade schools. 

The training thus given, essentially preparatory, elementary, and 
broadening, can be made, I believe, the best gateway to apprentice- 
ship training for a large number of workers. The pupils of such 
schools (and of trade schools) are most likely to be acceptable to 
employers as apprentices in the skilled trades. Both types of schools 
are likely to shorten the apprenticeship coming after school attend- 
ance, and such shortening, if not extreme, should not arouse the 
antagonism of the trade unions. Its type of work will also doubtless 
be of much value to correct the one-sided specialization to which 
many or most of its pupils will later be subject. One of the chief 
reasons for trade schools in our country is this need of correcting 
specialization. As stated above, we can not expect, by any sort of 
apprenticeship law or otherwise, to greatly change the extent of 
specialization in industry. However, the general industrial schools 
will, I believe, prove themselves as capable as the trade schools of 
correcting one-sided specialization. Certainly, if their result on each 



SUGGESTION'S FOR OUE INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 141 

pupil in this respect be nearly as great as that of the trade schools, 
it will be attained at less cost and will benefit greater numbers. 

Both industrial and trade schools raise a question, one suggested 
by the almost invariable German practice of obtaining the first indus- 
trial training in the commercial shop. Shall we do likewise ? Obvi- 
ously for those of our boys and girls who enter the skilled trades at 
an age not earlier than 15 or 16 years, and leave common school at 
14, this is impossible. For such youthful workers the best plan, if 
they can afford it, is to attend a general industrial or trade school 
during the interval. Wherever the particular situation does not 
forbid it, however, it is throughly desirable to apply the German 
principle. In passing, I may say that one point of distinct superior- 
ity of the German higher technical education (except in the technical 
high school) to that in the United States, is that in Germany a con- 
siderable amount of practical work must precede the theoretical. 
The truth of this superiority is beginning to be realized here, espe- 
cially when the superior results are noted of cooperation between 
technical colleges and commercial shops, as in the case of the Uni- 
versity of Cincinnati. 

With only the types of schools so far discussed, we shall not yet 
have achieved really popular industrial education in large measure. 
The masses will probably be unable, will consider themselves unable, 
or will for other reasons fail to attend these schools. The type of 
school which best meets the needs of the great masses of industry, 
both skilled and unskilled, is the improvement school. The need 
for schools of this type is undoubted. More and more its virtues 
are being appreciated in this country. We now have such schools 
in Cincinnati and Boston; and in Wisconsin; they are advocated 
by educators for New York City, and we may expect their rapid 
spread. Their advantages are manifold. They can be made to 
meet the needs for industrial training of all not better cared 
for. They are flexible and require a comparatively small plant. 
They are cheap — an aspect of great importance. Industrial edu- 
cation is at best expensive, and its expense is likely to cause 
the undue curtailment of facilities in many localities, such that 
the needs of some workers will not be met. In the past we have 
furnished comparatively large facilities for industrial education for 
the few, but insignificant facilities for the many. In the past 
this direct neglect of the many was involved in the best use of 
small facilities. With but few industrial schools, the need for 
higher technical training was so great that some schools were drawn 
from service to the ranks of industry, to service of the technical 
leaders. The needs for higher technical training are now well met. 
The great present call is for such industrial education as will directly 
help the masses. The improvement school has been found in Europe, 



142 GEEMAN INDUSTBIAL EDUCATION". 

and especially in Germany, to be the most efficient instrument for 
the attainment of this end. There is every reason to believe that a 
similar efficiency will result in this country from their establishment 
here. Industrial improvement schools, for reasons already fully 
discussed, should most certainly be in the daytime. German expe- 
rience emphatically approves of this practice. Shall attendance 
be voluntary or compulsory? The history of compulsory daytime 
attendance in Germany will probably be repeated in the United States 
wherever the like compulsion is adopted: First, opposition from em- 
ployers; later, acquiescence. The example of German and other 
employers who now tolerate or even desire compulsory attendance 
may and should make the period of adjustment of employers to the 
new situation shorter and easier. German experience has amply 
shown that voluntary improvement schools accomplished but little 
as compared with the same schools when made compulsory. The 
number of pupils reached was far greater and the average quality 
of work usually but little lower. However much many of our 
employers as men may wish to see the welfare of their youthful 
workers subserved, the stern necessities of competition force them 
not to do anything which will lessen the efficiency of their shops as 
measured in dollars and cents, and often force them even to neglect 
ultimate advantage for present gain. If we are serious in our desires 
to prevent exploitation of our child workers, one of the surest ways 
to protect them is to require their attendance at a school which will 
aid them to attain industrial efficiency. Such compulsory attendance 
might well be, as in much of Germany, for three years or until the 
ending of the term in which the eighteenth birthday is reached. The 
number of hours a week, the hours when these should meet, and the 
number of classes for pupils in different trades and occupations are 
matters to be decided locally and experimentally in large part. It 
may prove desirable to open the improvement schools first as evening 
schools, where the employers are strongly opposed to compulsory 
day attendance. Later, when they see the good results of these 
schools, the classes may be shifted to the daytime. Likewise the 
attendance may be voluntary for a time, until the schools have won 
the approval of the employers and others, and later compulsory. 
It is most probable that such schools will be first established in this 
country as voluntary schools. 

The improvement schools can probably have separate classes, as 
in Berlin and Munich, for those in many different trades and occu- 
pations. They are much better able to do this than are full-time 
trade or general industrial schools, because they will have less exten- 
sive shop equipment and because the number of pupils in the improve- 
ment schools will probably far exceed those in other industrial 
schools. With regard to the comparative importance of improve- 



SUGGESTIONS FOR OUE INDUSTRIAL TRAINING. 143 

merit and other schools, Dr. A. A. Snowden says, "throughout the 
civilized world the evening (or part-time day) industrial improve- 
ment school enrolls 20 pupils to every 1 who attends the other types 
of industrial vocational school. " 1 The matter of shop equipment 
raises the question as to how much practical workshop instruction 
should be given in these schools. Without reviewing the German 
experience on this point, we may note at once a difference in German 
and American needs. Our industries are more specialized, and the 
need for correction of one-sided training is therefore greater. Such 
correction can best be done in schools, and to be at all efficient needs 
workshop instruction, for many of our workers never perform the 
operations of more than a narrow branch of a trade. Thus, in 
improvement schools, as in other industrial schools, workshops are 
more needed than in Germany. Whether this need is so great as to 
justify improvement schools in which most of the instruction is 
given in the school shop, and the lesser portion only is technical 
(theoretical) training, is very doubtful, but must be worked out by 
experiment. If our improvement schools have more workshops than 
those in Germany, as they should have, their cost will be correspond- 
ingly greater. Notwithstanding this greater cost, they will remain 
probably the cheapest and most efficient type of industrial school. 

Intermediate between the improvement schools, which take but 
4 to 10 hours a week of the worker's time, and the full-time trade 
or preparatory industrial schools are a number of part-time schools. 
The specific divisions of time between school and shop are various. 
These schools are growing rapidly, and with good reason, for they 
furnish for those pupils who can afford it one of the best means 
of learning thoroughly both the theory and practice of their trade. 
Such part-time schools are one of the chief contributions of the United 
States to the world problem of industrial education. Improvement 
schools may be classed as part-time schools, but the term is used 
chiefly for schools which occupy a larger portion of the worker's 
time. 

The control of the industrial schools of all types is best vested, 
according to German and other experience, in some body or bodies 
not dominated by the schoolmen, but which receive the aid of com- 
petent educational experts. State aid, and accompanying measure 
ol control and standardization, is likely to play a large and effective 
part in our future industrial education, as it has in Germany. 
Employers should be represented on school boards, as in Germany, 
but, as is seldom done there, workers also should be allowed a place. 
The industrial schools should keep in the closest touch with each of 
these classes. Only by such close touch with, and real control by, 
the two classes most directly affected can our industrial education 
be made both efficient and truly democratic. 

1 Bep. of N. J. Commis. on Indus. Educ, 1909, p. 7. 



APPENDIX A. 

A GERMAN APPRENTICE CONTRACT. 

The following apprentice contract is executed between the firm of Friedrich Krupp, 
share company in Essen on the Ruhr, and (apprentice's name), born at (place of 
birth), to (name of parents), accompanied by his (parent or guardian, and name) as his 
legal representative. 1 

Section 1. — The firm accepts (apprentice's name) as apprentice for their cast-steel 
factory and obligates themselves to have him trained as a (trade or branch in which 
apprenticed) under the direction of a suitable representative. The apprentice is 
thrown under the fatherly authority of the representative. 

Sec. 2. — The apprentice is obligated to obedience and truth, to industry and proper 
conduct. 

He must regularly attend, under the direction of the firm, an improvement school, 
and present the certificate there obtained, immediately on its receipt, to the official 
set over him. 

Sec. 3. — The apprentice is responsible for his support and for all other things neces- 
sary, with the exception of the tools necessary to his work. 

He shall receive from the day of his entrance on apprenticeship 2 pay for each 
working day, which shall depend on his conduct, ability, and efficiency, according to 
the following scheme: 

Daily pay of apprentices. 



Age of entrance. 



Between 14 and 15 years. 
Between 15 and 16 vears. 



Year of apprenticeship. 



First. 



Marks. 

0. 50-0. 70 

.70- .90 



Second. Third 



Marks. 
0.S0-1.00 
1.00-1.20 



Marks. 

1.10-1.50 

1.40-1.80 



Qualified apprentices may be allowed to undertake piecework in their third year, 
and for this receive up to 50 pfennigs a day in excess of their daily wage. 

No subtraction from the wage of the apprentice shall be made for the working hours 
in which he attends improvement school. 

Sec. 4. — The apprenticeship begins with the (date) and lasts three years. Work 
days in which the apprentice has neglected (his work) shall not be included in the 
reckoning of the length of apprenticeship, but so much more must be added. With 
good conduct and efficiency, the repetition of neglected days to a maximum of 25 
may be remitted. 

Sec 5. — The first three months of the apprenticeship are a period of probation, 
during which either party may withdraw from the apprentice contract. 

After the probation period the firm is authorized to discharge the apprentice at once 
before the ending of the contractual time in the cases stated in section 123 of the 
National Industrial Law (see supplement 3 ), or when he has repeatedly violated his 

1 A guardian, to execute an apprentice contract, must receive the approval of the guardianship court. 
8 Before entering on apprenticeship in the Krupp works, a boy must first serve a year as errand boy or in 
similar capacity. 
3 Sec. 123 is given in full; of. ch. 7, p. 15. 

88740°— 13 10 145 



146 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

duties of obedience and truth, industry and proper conduct, or neglected his attend- 
ance on improvement or trade school. (Sec. 2.) 

Sec. 6. — On the part of the apprentice, the apprenticeship may be ended in the 
cases of section 124, numbers 1, 3, 4, and 5 of the National Industrial Law (see supple- 
ment), 1 and also if the firm neglects their legal duties toward the apprentice in a 
manner dangerous to his health, his morals, or his training, or misuses the right of 
fatherly authority, or becomes unable to fulfill their contractual duties. 

Sec. 7. — On the close of the apprenticeship a certificate shall be given to the 
apprentice concerning the length of the apprenticeship and the knowledge and skill 
acquired during it, as well as concerning his conduct. An apprentice letter (Lehr- 
brief) shall be given only when the contractual period of apprenticeship has been 
completed or shortened with approval of the firm. 

Sec 8. — The firm reserves to itself the payment to the apprentice on regular com- 
pletion of apprenticeship, when his conduct and efficiency was, according to the 
decision of the official in charge, good, of a reward not to exceed 150 marks. 

The firm decides according to its free judgment whether the payment is to be 
refused wholly or in part, and whether it is to be made to the apprentice himself or 
to his legal representative. 

Sec. 9. — Subject to the provisions of this contract, the apprentice is subject to 
all regulations for the workers of the cast-steel factory, especially the work regulations. 

For other matters, so far as there are no regulations in the present contract, the 
provisions of the National Industrial Law apply. 

Sec 10. — Apprentices who remain at the steel factory after the close of their 
apprenticeship shall, on continued good conduct and efficiency, so far as possible, be 
given opportunity to train themselves further and to progress. 

Essen/Ruhr, the (date) 



(Signature of the apprentice.) (Signature of the legal representative.) 

Fried. Krupp 
Aktiengesellschaf t . 
Das Direktorium. 

The above apprentice contract is that used in the great Krupp 
works, employing 30,000 men, besides officials. The normal contract 
forms of the chambers of industry for handwork in Prussia are very 
long and provide for almost all questions that might arise under the 
apprenticeship. Their main provisions are presented in the exposi- 
tion of the National Industrial Law, in chapter 7. Different forms of 
contracts are sometimes used for handworkers and for factory 
workers. 



1 Sec. 124 is given in full; cf. ch. 72, p. 16. 



APPENDIX B. 

THE WISCONSIN APPRENTICE LAW OF 1911.* 

Sec. 2377. Every contract or agreement entered into between a minor and 
employer by which the minor is to learn a trade shall be known as an indenture, and 
shall comply with the provisions of sections 2378 to 2386, inclusive, of the statutes. 
Every minor entering into such a contract shall be known as an apprentice. 

Sec. 2378. Any minor may, by the execution of an indenture, bind himself as 
hereinafter provided, and such indenture may provide that the length of the term of 
the apprentice shall depend on the degree of the efficiency reached in the work 
assigned, but no indenture shall be made for less than one year, and if the minor is 
less than eighteen years of age the indenture shall in no case be for a period of less 
than two years. 

Sec. 2379. Any person or persons apprenticing a minor or forming any contractual 
relation in the nature of an apprenticeship without complying with the provisions of 
sections 2377 to 2387, inclusive, of the statutes, shall, upon conviction thereof, be 
punished by a fine of not less than fifty nor more than one hundred dollars. 

Sec. 2380. It shall be the duty of the commissioner of labor, the factory inspector, 
or assistant factory inspectors to enforce the provisions of this act and to prosecute vio- 
lations of the same before any court of competent jurisdiction in this State. 

Sec. 2381. Every indenture shall be signed: 

(1) By the minor. 

(2) By the father; and if the father be dead or legally incapable of giving consent, 
or has abandoned his family, then 

(3) By the mother ; and if both the father and the mother be dead or legally incapable 
of giving consent, then 

(4) By the guardian of the minor, if any. 

(5) If there be no parent or guardian with authority to sign, then by two justices of 
the peace of the county of residence of the minor. 

(6) By the employer. 

Sec. 2382. Every indenture shall contain: 

(1) The names of the parties. 

(2) The date of the birth of the minor. 

(3) A statement of the trade the minor is to be taught, and the time at which the 
apprenticeship shall begin and end. 

(4) An agreement stating the number of hours to be spent in work, and the number 
of hours to be spent in instruction. The total of such number of hours shall not exceed 
fifty-five in any one week. 

(5) An agreement that the whole trade, as carried on by the employer, shall be 
taught, and an agreement as to the time to be spent at each process or machine. 

(6) An agreement between the employer and the apprentice that not less than five 
hours per week of the aforementioned fifty-five hours per week shall be devoted to 
instruction. Such instruction shall include — 

(a) Two hours a week instruction in English, in citizenship, business practice, 
physiology, hygiene, and the use of safety devices. 

(6) Such other branches as may be approved by the State board of industrial 
education. 

1 Laws of Wisconsin relating to employment of women and children, industrial education and truancy. 
Wisconsin State Bd. of Indus. Educ, Bull. no. 1., pp. 24-26. 

147 



148 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

(7) A statement of the compensation to be paid the apprentice. 

Sec. 2383. The instruction specified in section 2382 may be given in a public school, 
or in such other manner as may be approved by the local board of industrial education; 
and if there be no local board, subject to the approval of the State board of industrial 
education. Attendance at the public school, if any, shall be, certified to by the 
teachers in charge of the courses, and failure to attend shall subject the apprentice to 
the penalty of a loss of compensation for three hours for every hour he shall be absent 
without good cause. It shall be the duty of the school officials to cooperate for the 
enforcement of this law. 

Sec. 2384. It shall be lawful to include in the indenture or agreement an article 
stipulating that during such period of the year as the public schools shall not be in 
session the employer and the apprentice may be released from those portions of the 
indenture which affect the instruction to be given. 

Sec 2385. If either party to an indenture shall fail to perform any of the stipulations, 
he shall forfeit not less than ten nor more than fifty dollars on complaint, the collec- 
tion of which may be made by the commissioner of labor, factory inspector, or assistant 
factory inspectors in any court of competent jurisdiction in this State. Any court of 
competent jurisdiction may, in its discretion, also annul the indenture. Nothingherein 
prescribed shall deprive the employer of the right to dismiss any apprentice who has 
willfully violated the rules and regulations applying to all workmen. 

Sec. 2386. The employer shall give a bonus of not less than fifty dollars to the appren- 
tice on the expiration of the term of the indenture, and also a certificate stating the 
term of the indenture. 

Sec 2387. A certified copy of every indenture by which any minor may be appren- 
ticed shall be filed by the employer with the State commissioner of labor. 

This apprentice law, the most advanced in the United States, is in 
several respects very like the German national law, described in 
chapter 7. It is to be studied in connection with the Wisconsin com- 
pulsory improvement school attendance law of 1911, which is here 
given: 

CONTINUATION AND EVENING SCHOOLS. 1 

(Section 1728c-l) 1. Whenever any evening school, continuation classes, indus- 
trial school, or commercial school shall be established in any town, village, or city in 
this State for minors between the ages of fourteen and sixteen working under permit as 
now provided by law, every such child residing within any town, village, or city in 
which any such school is established shall attend such school not less than five hours 
per week for six months in each year until such child becomes sixteen years of age, 
and every employer shall allow all minor employees over fourteen and under sixteen 
years of age a reduction in hours of work of not less than the number of hours the 
minor is by this section required to attend school. 

1 Laws of Wisconsin relating to employment of women and children, industrial education and truancy. 
Wisconsin State Bd. of Indus. Educ. Bull. no. 1, p. 10. 



LIST OF REFERENCES. 

American federation of labor. Committee on industrial education. Industrial edu- 
cation. Washington, American federation of labor, 1910. 

Baar, Ewald. Die deutsche fortbildungsschule im jahre 1909. Schriften der Statis- 
tischen zentralstelle des deutschen lehrervereins. Leipzig, J. Klinkhardt, 1910. 

Berlin. Fach- und fortbildungsschulwesen der stadt Berlin T Ubersicht iiber das 
schuljahr, 1909-1910. Berlin [1911] 

Handwerkskammer. Geschaftsbericht, 1909-1910. 

Michaelis. Carl. Der gegenwartige zustand und die naehsten aufgaben des 

Berliner fortbildungsschulwesens, 1911. 

Stadtshaushalts etat: 1910. Kap. IV. Abteil. 10. Pflichtfortbildungs- 

schulen, Berlin. 

Stadtische hohere webeschule. Programm. Berlin, 1911. 

Verwaltungsbericht des magistrats zu Berlin. 1910. no. 9. Bericht iiber 



das stadtische fach- und fortbildungsschulwesen. 
Bloomfield, Meyer. The vocational guidance of youth . . . Boston, New York 

[etc.] Houghton Mifflin company [ e 1911] xii, 123 p. 12°. (Riverside edu- 
cational monographs, ed. by H. Suzzalo) 
Brandon, H. C. The cost of industrial education in the United States: a study of 

fifty typical schools. In Industrial education . . . New York city, Teachers 

college, Columbia university, 1911. p. 44. (Teachers college record, vol. xii, 

no. 4) 
[Clay, H. A.] Compulsory continuation schools in Germany. London, Printed for 

H. M. Stationery office, by Eyre and Spottiswoode, ltd., 1910. viii, 15 p. 8°. 

([Great Britain] Board of education. Educational pamphlets, no. 18) 
Coelsch, Hans. Deutsche lehrlingspolitik im handwerk. Berlin, J. Guttentag, 1910. 
Denkschrift des Essener handwerks an den Herrn Oberbiirgermeister der stadt Essen 

Geh. Regierungsrat Holle. Ueberreicht vom Innungs ausschusz Essen J. A., usw. 

Essen den 18. Juli 1910. Essen, F. W. Rohden [1910] 
Hamburg. Apprentice trade school of plumbers and related trades. Curriculum in 

manuscript form, obtained from Schulinspektor Herr August Kasten, Hamburg. 

Bericht iiber das schuljahr, 1909-1910. 

Deutsche schmiedeschule. Lehrplan. 

Gewerbekammer. Jahresbericht, 1910. Hamburg, Lfitcke und Wulff, 1911. 

Gewerbeschulen, staatliche, Bismarkstrasse, usw. Bericht, 1909-1910. 

— Hauptgewerbeschule, tagesgewerbeschule, und wagenbauschule, staatliche. 
Bericht, 1909-1910. 

Staatliche baugewerkschule fur hochbau und tiefbau zu Hamburg, Programm. 

Technikum, staatliche. Programm und bericht fiber das schuljahr, 1909-1910. 

Wagenbauschule, lehrplan der staatlichen. 



Howard, Earl Dean. The cause and extent of the recent industrial progress in Ger- 
many. Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin company [1907] xiii, 147 p. 8°. 

(Hart, Schaffner & Marx prize essays, 1) 

149 



150 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

Kerschensteiner, Georg M. Three lectures on vocational training . . . Delivered in 
America under the auspices of the National society for the promotion of industrial 
education. [Chicago] The Commercial club of Chicago, 1911. 52 p. 8°. 

Cover-title. 

Contents. — The fundamental principles of continuation schools. — The organization of the contin- 
uation school of Munich. — The technical day trade schools in Germany. 

See also interviews with Dr. Kerschensteiner in New York Times, December 4, 1910, and New York 
Tribune, December 4, 1910. 

Massachusetts. Bureau of statistics of labor. The apprenticeship system. Annual 

report, 1906. Boston, "Wright & Potter printing co., 1906. 
Commission on industrial and technical education. Report, 1906. Boston, 

Wright & Potter printing co., state printers, 1906. 196 p. 8°. ([Massachusetts. 

General court] Senate no. 349) 
Carroll D. Wright, chairman. 

Minnesota. Bureau of labor. 4th biennial report, 1893. Sec. 3. St. Paul, Pioneer 

press co., 1895. 
Motley, J. M. Apprenticeship in American trade unions. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins 

university press, 1907. 
Munich. Bericht iiber die bewahrung der neugestaltung der gewerblichen fortbil- 

dungsschulen Mtinchens. In Bericht iiber die stadtischen volks- und mittel- 

schulen Miinchens ftir das geschaftsjahr, 1907. Miinchen, Carl Gerber, 1907. 
Jahresbericht der mannlichen fortbildungs- und gewerbeschulen Miinchens. 

Ftini'ter, 1910-1911. Miinchen, Carl Gerber, 1911. 
Kerschensteiner, Georg. Organisation und lehrplane der obligatorischen 

fach- und fortbildungsschulen fur knaben in Miinchen, 1910. 
Satzungen fur die fortbildungsschulen der Konigl. haupt- und residenzstadt 



Miinchen, 1905. 
National association of manufacturers of the United States. Proceedings of the 15th 

annual convention, New York, May 1910. New York, National association of 

manufacturers, 1910, 
Proceedings of the 16th annual convention, New York, May 15-17, 1911. 

New York, National association of American manufactures, 1911. 8*. 
National education association of the United States. Committee on the place of 

industries in public education. Report, July 1910. The Association, 1910. 

123 p. 8». 
National society for the promotion of industrial education. Proceedings of the 3d 

annual meeting, Milwaukee, Wis., Dec. 2-4, 1909. New York, National society 

for the promotion of industrial education, 1910. 8*. (Its Bulletin no. 10) 
A descriptive list of trade and industrial schools in the United States. By 

E. H. Reisner. 1910. 128 p. 8». (JfeBulletinno.il) 
Legislation upon industrial education in the United States. By E. C. Elliott. 



1910. 76 p. 8*. (Its Bulletin no. 12) 
— The trade continuation schools of Munich. 1911. (Its Bulletin no. 14) 



New Jersey. Commission on industrial education. Industrial education and manual 

training in America. In its Report. Trenton, N. J., MacCrellish & Quigley, 

state printers, 1909. p. 39-170. (Appendix II) 
Compiled by A. A. Snowden. 
New York. Bureau of labor statistics. Twenty -sixth annual report, 1908. Part I. 

Industrial training. State dept. of labor, 1909. 
Completed by C. R. Richards. 
Preussen, gewerbliche fachschulen in, hrsg. v. Konigl. Landesgewerbeamt. 
Reichs-Gewerbe-Ordnung, mit .alien ausfiihrungsbestimmungen fur das Deutsche 

Reich und Preussen, erlautert von Dr. F. Hoffman. Berlin, Carl Heymann, 1911. 



LIST OF REFERENCES. 151 

Sadler, Michael E., ed. Continuous schools in England and elsewhere . . . Manches- 
ter, University press, 1907. xxvi, 779 p. 8° (Publications of the University of 
Manchester. Educational series, no. 1) 

Snowden, A. A. The industrial improvement schools of Wuerttemberg . . . [New 
York, . Columbia university press, 1907] 80 p. 8° (Teachers college record, 
vol. viii, no. 5) 

Strayer, George D. Age and grade census of schools and colleges: a study of retarda- 
tion and elimination. Washington, Government printing office, 1911. 144 p. 
8° (U. S. Bureau of education. Bulletin no. 5, 1911) 

United States. Bureau of labor. Industrial education . . . Washington, Govern- 
ment printing office, 1911. 822 p. 8° (25th annual report of the Commissioner 
of labor) 

Trade and technical education. Washington, Government printing 

office, 1902. 1332 p. 8° (17th annual report of the Commissioner of labor) 
Department of commerce and labor. Bureau of statistics. Industrial edu- 



cation in Germany . . . Washington, Government printing office, 1905. 323 p. 

illus. 8°. (Special consular reports, v. 33) 
Vocation bureau of Boston. Vocations for Boston boys. The machinist. Boston, 

Vocation bureau, 1911. (Its Bulletin no. 1) 
Weyl, Walter E. and Sakolski, A. M. Conditions of entrance to the principal trades. 

Washington, Government printing office, 1906. (U. S. Bureau of labor. Bul- 
letin no. 67. Nov. 1906) 
Wisconsin. Commission upon the plans for the extension of industrial and agricul- 
tural training. Advance sheets of report . . . Submitted to the governor 

January 10, 1911. Madison, Wis., Democrat printing company, state printer, 

1911. vii, 135 p. 8° 
State board of industrial education. Laws relating to employment of women 

and children, industrial education, and truancy. Madison, Wis. Published by 

the Board, 1912. 48 p. 8° (Bulletin no. 1) 
Voss, R. von. Zu frage der ausbildung von lehrlingen fur die grossindustrie. Werk- 

stattstechnik (Berlin). Heft 5, 1911. 
Wright, Carroll D. The apprenticeship system in its relation to industrial education. 

Washington, Government printing office, 1908. 116 p. 8° (U. S. Bureau of 

education. Bulletin no. 6, 1908) 
Women and child wage-earners in the United States. Report on condition. In 19 

volumes. Vol. vii. — Conditions under which children leave school to go to work. 

Washington, Government printing office, 1910. 309 p. 8° (61st Congress, 2d 

sess. Senate. Document no. 645) 

Prepared under the direction of Charles P. Neill, commissioner of labor. 

SUPPLEMENTARY LIST OF PAMPHLETS ON VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE. 

Ratgeber fur die berufswahl schulentlassener knaben; hrsg. von der Hamburg gesell- 

schaft zur beforderung der kiinste und niitzlichen gewerbe. Hamburg, Lucas 

Grafe, 1905. 
Ratgeber fur die berufswahl von frauen und madchen zuganglich mit jeder sehulbil- 

dung; hrsg. von den gewerbekammern zu Hamburg, Bremen, und Lubeck. 

Hamburg, Ltitcke und Wulff, 1911. 
Einige winke fur die berufswahl unserer knaben beim verlassen der voll aschule. 

Stuttgart, Peter Hobbing. 
Schumachers, Fr. Ein verkannter beruf: ein ratgeber fur die berufswahl Gotha, 

Friedrich Perthes, 1906. 



152 GERMAN INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION". 

BIBLIOGRAPHIES ON INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION. 

Hanus, Paul H. Industrial education. In A guide to reading in social ethics, and 

allied subjects. Part 4, chapter 1. Cambridge, Mass. Harvard university, 1910. 

p. 144-50. 
National education association of the United States. Dept. of manual training. 

Selected bibliography on industrial education. In its Report of the Committee 

on the place of industries in public education. Journal of proceedings and 

addresses, 1910. p. 116-23. 
Richards, Charles R. Selected bibliography on industrial education. [Asbury Park, 

N. J., Kinmonth press] 1907. 32 p. 8°. (National society for the promotion of 

industrial education. Bulletin no. 2) 
See also bibliography by same compiler in New York. Bureau of labor statistics. 26th annual 

report for 1908, pt. 1. p. 357-94. 

United States. Bureau of education. Bibliography of industrial, vocational and 
trade education. (In press) 

References to books, reports and periodicals from 1900 to 1913. Elaborately annotated. Subject 
and author index. 

Bureau of labor. Selected bibliography on industrial education. In its 

25th annual report. Washington, Government printing office, 1910. p. 519-39, 
An excellent bibliography, but not annotated. Strong in references to foreign reports. 



INDEX. 



Agriculture, backwardness, Germany, 50. 

American Federation of Labor, on public 
industrial education, 33. 

American trade-unions, and apprentice- 
ship system, 13-14. 

Apprentices, continuation school, Mu- 
nich, 109-110; schools in shops, United 
States, 30-33; trade schools, Berlin, 
100-106; wages, Germany, 67. 

Apprenticeship, discussion of revival, 
United States, 133-137; German form 
of contract, 145-146; Germany, 64-76, 
96-108; Hamburg, status, 93; history and 
present status, United States, 9-18; 
restriction, attitude in United States, 
19-20; Wisconsin law (1911), 147-148. 
See also Guilds. 

Attendance, compulsory, German State 
laws, 81-84. 

Bavaria, industrial schools, 109-121. 

Belfield, H. H., on status of manual 
training, 29. 

Berlin, industrial schools, 96-108. 

Berlin Cabinetmakers' School, course of 
study, 101. 

Bibliography, industrial education, 149- 
152. 

"Blind-alley" employments, discussion, 
United States, 45. 

Bookkeeping, courses, Berlin, 104. 

Boston, Vocation Bureau, statistics of em- 
ployment of apprentices, 13. 

Chambers of industry, Germany, 61-63. 

Children, conditions under which they 
leave school to go to work, United 
States, 45-46; proportion leaving school, 
United States, 43. 

Compulsory attendance. See Attend- 
ance, compulsory. 

Continuation and evening schools, legis- 
lation, Wisconsin, 148. 

Continuation schools, apprentices, Mu- 
nich, 109-110. 



Contracts, apprenticeship, Germany, 73- 

74. 
Cooperative systems, public schools and 

shops, United States, 33. 
Courses of study, cabinetmakers' school, 

Berlin, 101; compulsory improvement 

school, Berlin, 97-98; industrial schools, 

Munich, 113, 116. 

Employers and employed, opinions re- 
garding industrial situation, United 
States, 19-26. 

Evening schools, Europe, value, 36. 

Factory schools, United States, 133. 

Germany, background of the industrial 
schools, 49-55; compulsory attendance 
laws, 81-84; results of the industrial 
schools, 122-131; system of apprentice- 
ship, 64-76; system of industrial schools, 
77-86. 

Girls, improvement schools, Munich, 117; 
industrial schools, Germany, 86. 

Guild schools, for painters, Munich, 109. 

Guilds, compulsory, Berlin, 103-104; 
Hamburg, 92-93; history and develop- 
ment, Germany, 56-63. 

Hamburg, industrial schools, 87-97. 

Handwork, status, Germany, 53-54. 

Handwork trades, Germany, 66-67, 95. 

Handworkers' school, Berlin, 102-103. 

Helper system, as a substitute for appren- 
ticeship, 18. 

High schools, manual training and indus- 
trial pursuits, United States, 29-30. 

Humphreys, A. C, on vocational educa- 
tion, 29. 

Improvement schools, instruction in 

daytime, Germany, 125. 
Industrial revolution, effects on methods 

of production and transportation, 10-11. 
Industrial schools, history and present 

status, 27-39. 
Industrial workers, statistics, Germany, 52. 
Industries, classification, Germany, 51-52. 

153 



154 



INDEX. 



Kerschensteiner, Georg, on continuation 
schools, 120; on industrial education, 
110-111. 

Krupp works, Germany, form of appren- 
tice contract, 145-146. 

Legislation, industrial education, United 
States, 38-39; industries, Germany, 52; 
Wisconsin, apprentice law of 1911, 
147-148. 

McCarthy, Charles, on German system of 
apprenticeship, 65. 

Machines, effect on workers, 16. 

Manual training, movement in United 
States, 28; opinion of educators re- 
garding, United States, 29-30. 

Massachusetts, Bureau of Statistics of 
Labor, report on apprenticeship sys- 
tem, 12. 

Military service, effect on industries, 
Germany, 51. 

Minnesota, Bureau of Labor, and ap- 
prenticeship system, 15. 

Morrill land -grant act, and industrial 
education, 28. 

Motley, Dr., on apprenticeship in Amer- 
ican trade-unions, 13-14. 

Munich, industrial schools, 109-121. 

National Association of Machine Tool 
Builders, United States, and appren- 
ticeship system, 16-17. 

National Association of Manufacturers, 
United States, on trade schools, 22-24. 

New Jersey, Commission on Industrial 
Education, on Workers in building 
trades, 13. 

Page-Wilson bill, provisions, 26. 
Part-time system, apprenticeship, United 

States, 32-33. 
Plinganstrasse District School, Munich, 

curriculum, 116. 
Printing, apprenticeship, United States, 

32. 
Prussia industrial education, 77-78, 96- 

108. 
Pupils leaving school, statistics, United 

States, 43. 

Railroads, apprentices, United States, 

12-13. 
Roman Catholic Church, and "Christian" 

unions, 55. 
Royal Technical High School, Charlotten- 

burg, Germany, work, 96. 



Shop schools for apprentices, United 

States, 30-33. 
Specialization, German industries, 53-55. 

Teachers, industrial schools, Berlin, 99; 
Germany, problem of securing, 126-127; 
Munich, 115. 

Technical schools, aims, United States, 35. 

Textile schools, Berlin, 102. 

Trade education, United States, 139. 

Trade improvement schools, Munich, 111- 
113, 117. 

Trade schools, apprentice, Berlin, 100- 
106; attitude of employers and em- 
ployees toward, United States, 21-22, 
24-26; costs, United States, 1380; Ham- 
burg, 88-89, 91-92; origin and growth, 
United States, 28; private, United 
States, 34-35; public, United States, 
28-29, 34-35. 

Trade unions, Germany, 55; status in 
Germany, 55; restriction of apprentices, 
United States, 19-20. 

Typographical Society of New Orleans, 
and apprenticeship system, 14. 

United States, apprenticeship, history 
and present outlook, 9-18; history and 
status of industrial schools, 27-39; re- 
sults and omissions of industrial educa- 
tion, 40-48; suggestions for industrial 
training, 133-143. 

United States Bureau of Labor, report on 
conditions under which children leave 
school to go to work, 45-46. 

Victoria Improvement School, Berlin, 

work, 104-105. 
Vocational education, United States, 29. 
Vocational guidance, movement, United 

States, 134-135. 
Vocational schools, development, United 

States, 35-36. 
Voluntary improvement schools, Berlin, 

96. 

Wages, earnings of graduates of trade 
schools, United States, 40-41. 

Wisconsin, apprentice law of 1911, 147- 
148 ;' continuation and evening schools, 
legislation, 148. 

Workshops in schools, Germany, opposi- 
tion, 129-130; Munich, 119-120. 

Wright, C. D., on demand for trade 
schools, 20-21. 

Young Men's Christian Association, even- 
ing industrial schools, 36-37. 



o 



&s> 






BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF EDUCATION. 

(Continued from p. 2 of cover.) 

No. 5. A study of expenses of city school systems. Harlan Updegrafl. 
*No. 6. Agricultural education in secondary schools. 10 cts. 

No. 7. Educational status of nursing. M. Adelaide Nutting. 
*No. 8. Peace day. Fannie Fern Andrews. 5 cts. 

No. 9. Country schools for city boys. William Starr Myers. 
*No. 10. Bibliography of education in agriculture and home economics. 10 eta. 

No. 11. Current educational topics, No. I. 

No. 12. Dutch schools of New Netherland and colonial New York. W. H. Kilpatrick. 
*No. 13. Influences tending to improve the work of teacher of mathematics. 5 cts. 

No. 14. Report of the American commissioners on the teaching of mathematics. 

No. 15. Current educational topics, No. II. 
*No. 16. The reorganized school playground. Henry S. Curtis. 5 cts. 
*No. 17. The Montessori system of education. Anna Tolman Smith. 5 cts. 
*No. 18. Teaching language through agriculture, etc. M. A. Leiper. 5 cts. 
*No. 19. Professional distribution of college graduates. B. B. Burritt. 10 cts. 
*No. 20. Readjustment of a rural highschool. H.A.Brown. 10 cts. 

No. 21. Urban and rural common-school statistics. H. Updegrafl and W. R. Hood. 

No. 22. Public and private high schools. 
*No. 23. Special collections in libraries. W. D. Johnston and I. G. Mudge. 10 cts. 

No. 24. Current educational topics, No. III. 

No. 25. List of publications of the United States Bureau of Education, 1912. 

No. 26. Bibliography of child study for the years of 1910-1911. 

No. 27. History of public school education in Arkansas. Stephen B. Weeks. 

No. 28. Cultivating school grounds in Wake County, N. 0. Zebulon Judd. 

No. 29. Bibliography of teaching of mathematics. D. E. Smith and C. Goldziher. 

No. 30. L a tin -American universities and special schools. Edgar Ewing Brandon. 

No. 31. Educational directory, 1912. 

No. 32. Bibliography of exceptional children and their education. A. MacDonald. 

No. 33. Statistics of State universities, etc., 1912. 

1913. 

No. 1. Monthly record of current educational publications, January, 1913. 

No. 2. Training courses for rural teachers. A. C. Monahan and R. H. Wright. 

No. 3. The teaching of modern languages in the United States. C. H. Handschin. 

No. 4. Present standards of higher education. George Edwin MacLean. 

No. 5. Monthly record of current educational publications. February, 1913. 

No. 6. Agricultural instruction in high schools. C. H. Robison and F. B. Jenks. 

No. 7. College entrance requirements. Clarence D. Kingsley. 

No. 8. The status of rural education. A. C. Monahan. 

No. 9. Consular reports on continuation schools in Prussia. 

No. 10. Monthly record of current educational publications, March, 1913. 

No. 11. Monthly record of current educational publications, April, 1913. 

No. 12. The promotion of peace. Fannie Fern Andrews. 

No. 13. Standards for measuring efficiency of schools. G. D. Strayer. 

No. 14. Agricultural instruction in secondary schools. 

No. 15. Monthly record of current educational publications, May, 1913. 

No. 16. Bibliography of medical inspection and health supervision. 

No. 17. A trade school for girls. 

No. 18. Congress on hygiene and demography. Fletcher B. Dresslar. 

No. 19. German industrial education. Holmes Beckwith. 

No. 20. Illiteracy in the United States. 

No. 21. Monthly record of current educational publications, June, 1913. 



